


So This Is What Happened

by Guede



Series: An Epic Beacon Hills Drama [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Blow Jobs, Dubious Morality, F/M, Frottage, Human Hale Family, Hurt/Comfort, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Magical Peter Hale, Pack Bonding, Pack Cuddles, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Build Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, The Hale Family (Teen Wolf) Lives, Werewolf Biology, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:27:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 48,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19887814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: So now, after everything that's happened plus high school graduation, Stiles has a little time to explain to Peter how things work.  There's really only one problem: Peter thinks he's a heartless psychotic werewolf.The werewolf part is true.7/29/19:“If that—like this is some kind of anti-aging thing, and we’re all really hundreds of years old?” Stiles says incredulously.  “Just how much vampire bullshit have you been reading?”“I’ve only been reading it because I couldn’t get an answer out of you that didn’t involve how I’m not qualified to learn about this, despite having toliveit,” Peter retorts, looking contemptuously at Stiles.  “Which is an extremely immature attitude, but I see that is, in fact, an intrinsic issue and not just you putting on an act.  No wonder you can’t deal with being attracted to me.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This honestly isn't going to make a lot of sense unless you read the prior parts in the series.

“No, that’s just a stupid self-perpetuating myth because most bitten werewolves don’t figure out how to anchor themselves and usually when they lose it, it’s at night because newbies tend to sleep-shift since no control, right, so a couple times somebody noticed it was a full moon and it all snowballed from there even though there is _no_ statistical evidence that werewolves kill more during a full moon than any other time of the month, and she’s a thirty-four C,” Stiles says, resisting the urge to throw all the shopping bags at Laura Hale. Why, he asks himself, does the sole group of people in this town who know what he really is has to have the collective attention span of a very small puppy? “That very _clearly_ says thirty-four B.”

Laura frowns and reaches into the middle of the bra to flip out the tag and look more closely at it. “Huh. So the full moon isn’t important.”

Stiles sighs. “That is totally not what I just said.”

“You said it doesn’t—”

“I said it’s not actually true that we lose our minds for three days out of every month because of the full moon,” Stiles says. He switches all of the bags to one arm, and never mind if being able to carry that many might look suspicious, he figures he’s already standing in the women’s lingerie section with Laura, who is fresh from work in her doctor’s coat and who even in that is obviously not going to wear anything less than a DD cup. “The full moon is important, we need a certain amount of moonlight or else we suffer a nutritional deficiency that affects our mental state. It’s the same exact concept as sunlight and vitamin D deficiency, which as a healthcare professional, I think you’d know about.”

“Yeah, so I’m in cardiology, not dermatology,” Laura says. She drops the tag and holds the bra out at arm’s length, as if she doesn’t find the tag convincing and needs to size it by eye. Where that’s going to do when she clearly doesn’t even understand which way bra-cup scales run is beyond Stiles. “Also, Melissa’s definitely lost weight since whenever she bought that one you showed me, so we should go tighter. It’s easier to just stitch on a hook extender once you gain the weight back.”

Stiles opens his mouth, then stops himself and watches as Laura puts that bra back on the rack and then takes off another one. Melissa’s clothes have been a little looser on her, but she’s also been staying home with Scott and not going to work so she’s been in a lot of sweats and other not-really tailored clothes. And has been borrowing them from Stiles’ dad, because her wardrobe’s gotten absolutely decimated since they came to Beacon Hills, which is why Stiles is playing packhorse to Laura Hale to begin with.

“You need to go down a cup size too when that happens,” Laura goes on a few seconds later. She decides the bra she’s got isn’t going to work either and goes for a third, which after some tugging at the straps and feeling around in the cup, is apparently what she’s looking for. She slips the hanger hook over her other forearm to keep company with one she’d picked out a couple minutes ago and then pushes way into the rack, her head almost disappearing as she fishes around in the offerings. “Because they’re mostly fat, and when you lose fat from somewhere nearby, the fat in them tends to flatten out to fill the gap. But you have to have it fit snug or else what’s left bounces around and stretches out and—well, actually, your healing covers that, right?”

“I guess?” Stiles says.

Laura pulls her head out of the bras. “Seriously? I thought you said you were born this way.”

“Yeah, _this_ way,” Stiles says, looking pointedly down at himself. Then reaches out and takes the handful of bras Laura’s hung on her arm. “Okay, fine, so these should work for her.”

“Yep, think so. This one too,” Laura says, handing Stiles one more. She puts the rest back and steps away from the rack, then turns and scans the section. “Underwear’s over there. By the way, you know that vitamin D deficiency causes rickets, right? I think you’re thinking more of vitamin B12 with the mental illness stuff.”

Stiles grits his teeth and trudges after her. “My analogy was more about the way the vitamin’s generated.”

“Okay, fine, but if you’re gonna ding my medical knowledge that I’ve been studying for almost a decade as if it’s really equivalent to not knowing all the ins and outs of being a werewolf, which I’ve only known was actually a real thing for the last _two months_ …expect a correction,” Laura says. She smiles at Stiles, looking and sounding way too much like her annoying uncle, and then starts rattling around the underwear hangers.

A quick look at Stiles’ phone tells him that this is at least the last item on Melissa’s list, and she of all people deserves to not have to worry about basic necessities like clothing. He can put up with Laura Hale. He can do this.

“So why’d you call me?” Laura asks. She pulls off a couple pairs that are plain cotton, eyeballs them, and then puts them back in favor of a pair that is silky green. “I mean, you’re all graduated now, it’s not like I’m the only one who’s free.”

“Did you honestly think I was going to call Cora? Or that she was going to help?” Stiles says. 

“Cora actually isn’t as bitchy as you think. Especially since, you know, now you’re not staging crap in the woods to spook her into leaving you alone. She probably would have so long as you explained it was to help Scott’s mom,” Laura says. She gives Stiles a glare over the underwear, then picks up another pair that’s got tons of lace on it. “You have any idea whether Melissa likes high-cut or bikini?”

“I have no idea, this is why you’re here,” Stiles says flatly. “Also, I wasn’t going to call Cora when she’s the one who got your brother and Allison onto stalking us in the first place.”

Laura puts back the lacy one. “That also why you’re not calling Allison on this one? I get not calling my mom, and I honestly do _not_ want to know what Victoria Argent’s opinion on underwear is, but she’s pretty close to Scott now, isn’t she?”

So Stiles gets that in calling Laura, he tacitly agreed to a certain quid pro quo, and this was never going to be just an act of charity. And he’s prepared to put up with some needling and some prying, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going just skin himself and lay down in front of a crackling fireplace. Yeah, the Hales know about werewolves now, but that’s not blackmail to hold over his head, that’s a lifestyle decision on their part, and if they haven’t realized that yet, he will _happily_ explain that to them.

“Okay,” Laura says, smelling considerably more nervous, as she chooses two more pairs of underwear without holding them up for Stiles first. She steps away from the rack and pulls out her phone, pretending to check the time but he sees her thumb move towards the messaging app and then abruptly pull away. Then she looks up. “Look, this magical superpower you have where you make them feel threatened—”

“That’s not a superpower, that’s just me,” Stiles mutters.

A tiny bit of irritation makes its way into Laura’s gaze. It doesn’t change how wary she smells. “I just want to remind you that you all came into town, made friends with us to find out stuff about this other psycho undead werewolf you knew, and then freaked out my sister, nearly got my brother killed, made my mom commit murder in our basement _and_ put my uncle in _therapy_. So this pissy thing of yours, because you’re trying to make friends for real now and we’re not biting? So we’re _still not biting_.”

And then Laura reaches over and takes all the clothes hangers that Stiles had been holding—her heartbeat jumps sharply but she doesn’t hesitate—and then walks away with them, towards the nearest cashier.

For a second Stiles stares after her. Then, biting back a snarl, he hurries up. She does wait for him to slap down the credit card, which gets her a judgy look from the saleswoman that she is completely oblivious to. He pays up and then Laura lets him reshuffle the bags so that he can once again carry them all, and starts heading off towards the end of the mall where the parking garage is attached.

“Hey,” Stiles says, walking after her. “Hey. _Hey_ , look—honestly, if you want to make a scene, we can throw down right now about the way your mom’s sexually exploiting my dad.”

It’s midday so the mall’s relatively empty, but when Laura spins around, her shoe-heel catches squeakily enough against the floor that several heads turn their way. She’s going to let Stiles have it anyway, and then—she abruptly pulls herself back. Doesn’t settle down, not with how her shoulders are set, it’s completely a tactical move, but…she does it.

“You think that’s going to get me to tell you where Peter is?” she says, when Stiles fully catches up to her.

That is…pointed. And, unfortunately, on point. Stiles admits his poker face slips a little. “We’re not trying to be friends,” he finally says, weighing up his options and then taking a leap of faith. “That’s not what this is about.”

It works. Even if Laura’s still smelling angry, the skepticism is smoothing out of her face. What he’s telling her makes sense with what she believes, and so she might not trust him but she’s definitely believing him. “Well, forgive me if I didn’t realize, since it looks exactly the same to me,” she says.

Stiles doesn’t even pretend to notice sarcasm that weak. “It is the same. We were trying to get to know you before, and we’re still trying to get to know you, except now we aren’t lying about why we’re doing it. We have to live in this town, at least for a little while longer, and you have to live with us. And I’m pretty sure you don’t want to have to do that blind and ignorant, any more than I want to have to put up with that kind of person.”

“Cora says you seemed pretty into the idea before,” Laura snorts. She glances around, then shrugs and starts walking again.

“That’s because your sister was pissed off I wouldn’t help her bump her English grade,” Stiles says. “Which, for the record, I would have actually done if I’d gotten paid. I don’t do that many GPA points for free.”

“I think first you have to prove you would get her to move that many points—well, not that it matters now,” Laura says. She slows a little, to check her buzzing phone, and then picks up again when it doesn’t seem to be important. “So you don’t want to know where Peter is.”

“I don’t have to, you already told me he’s in therapy,” Stiles points out.

Laura shrugs again. “Okay. We have thirty different therapists listed as primary staff and another forty-something affiliated with the hospital throughout the county, but you can run really fast so I guess that’s not much of a challenge for you to figure out.”

The thing is, if this was any other time in Stiles’ life, he probably would appreciate how she and her family have not only rolled with the surprises, but have drastically escalated their game. Right now, though…right now he and his dad are out late on patrol every night because they’re the only functioning werewolves, his best friend barely made it through graduation before having a panic attack in the car, and his best friend’s mom is spending most of her day not-talking to her son about nearly killing him while he was possessed by his psycho undead father. He’s _tired_.

Stiles looks down at the bags he’s carrying, then swallows back a sigh and keeps walking. He did at least get this done today, and even if Melissa’s not leaving the house, having to do the laundry every other day to have clothes to wear is an annoyance she doesn’t need. The whole Peter thing—he needs to figure that out too, but maybe he can just drop this stuff off first and eat lunch and…think about it. Or something. 

“So you got everything you need?” Laura asks him.

“What?” Stiles says, looking up.

She’s holding the door to the garage for him. He looks at her some more and she looks a lot like her brother about to bust out with one of his signature haikus of passive-aggression. And then her eyelids flutter, and she screws up her face a little and jerks her chin at the open doorway.

“I’ll tell you when Peter’s coming by the hospital today if you tell me whether Melissa’s going to make it to the hospital barbecue this weekend,” Laura says.

“So that’s how we’re running this?” Stiles says.

“Well, if it works for you,” Laura says. She holds the door a few seconds longer after he’s gone through, then scoots into the garage herself and immediately swings wide so that she’s at least six feet off. Which is still well within his leaping range, even with the bags, but she is retaining info. “People at work are talking about how she’s been on sick leave so long the admin’s going to reassess her position.”

If they go to the left, Stiles hits his car first and Laura has to go out of her way to circle back to hers. If they go straight and cut down the middle, they’ll hit her car first and his is only a dogleg over. He’s tempted, but then…he’s also tempted by the promise of dealing with Peter today instead of at the next awkward dinner get-together Talia Hale makes them have. “That’s not how FMLA works, and I’d hope if your HR department doesn’t know that, your mom does.”

“Look, she’s not going to lose it, and I’m not trying to make that a threat or blackmail or anything,” Laura says, irritated. “But it is what people are saying, and no matter what my mom thinks, she can’t actually make the rest of the hospital treat Melissa like a normal person and not like the town’s newest scandal. Melissa’s got staff under her, you know, and even if she’s not feeling well, she might want to at least send them a note about the barbe—”

“Why?” Stiles says.

Laura looks even more irritated. “Because then they’d have something to fucking tell people when they ask about her, and it’ll get them on her side—”

“No, why are you worried about Melissa’s rep at work?” Stiles says, shifting some bags around so he has a clear look at her face. He is in fact genuinely interested; Melissa mostly kept him out of the hospital end of the investigation, so he never got to know much about her and Laura interacting beyond the occasional eye-roll. “I thought you were all pissed off at us faking friends with you.”

“I am,” Laura says. Spits, really, and so quickly after his comment that it’s clear she didn’t think about it at all. But then she presses her lips together and stands back, and she is, in fact, thinking it over. “I…am mad. I know now what you were trying to get, and I can see why making friends with us would work, but understanding the logic doesn’t mean I forgive you. Or am going to forget. But—but I can’t fucking talk about it with Melissa if she doesn’t come back to work.”

Seeing as the friendship wasn’t real, that’s assuming Melissa also wants to talk about it. But Stiles doesn’t point that out, though the words cram up against the back of his teeth. He lets them squirm for a couple seconds, then swallows them back down. “She was busy trying to get Scott ready for graduation, so at least he wouldn’t lose that,” he finally says. “It’s been what, two days? It was a lot of work. She’s still catching up on her sleep.”

“Okay, well…if you’re not leaving immediately, you probably still want to think about dealing with this barbecue. I get you have your deal and all, and you don’t really have to care about what other people think, but…if she does come back and people aren’t immediately snooping in her business, that probably will make it easier,” Laura says. She slips her hands into her pockets and pulls the lab coat closer to her sides, taking a step back. Then she pauses. She’s rethinking what she’s going to do. “Peter’s coming by after lunch. He wanted to go check the morgue for something so he’ll be around for a while. And just so you know, I’m not telling you this because I’m fine with you harassing him.”

“Well, no, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be telling me at all if he hadn’t told you to do it,” Stiles guesses.

Laura flinches. Then takes another step back, even while she jerks one hand free of her coat and jabs a finger at him. “You know, you can tell yourself it’s fine if we’re just playing along with it, but the next time one of my family ends up in the hospital because of you—we know now. We know what you are. And we might not seem all that smart to you, but you go ahead and find out about that.”

Then she walks away, making Stiles’ choice about which route to take for him. He watches her till she’s disappeared between two SUVs, then hefts his bags and turns around. Not a fun trip, but at least it was productive.


	2. Chapter 2

When Stiles gets back to their rental house, Melissa’s actually not home. “Your dad came by and picked her up,” Scott says upon finding Stiles sniffing suspiciously around the guest bedroom. “Nothing major, he just wanted to get her opinion on some stuff in the preserve.”

“In the preserve?” Stiles says, immediately dropping everything in his arms and spinning around.

“It’s not a fight or anything like that, it’s just some old territory marks!” Scott yelps, diving forward. He grabs at the piles of clothes teetering on the edge of the bed, pushing them back so they collapse on the mattress and not on the floor. Then, exhaling in relief, he starts picking up the clothes and sorting them into neater piles. “He was scouting out another burial site and found some old marks, and I think he just wanted to see if she could tell which pack made them. That’s literally it, I swear, and Tara’s with them too and I don’t think your dad would take her if he was expecting any kind of fight, since she’s still on crutches.”

Stiles whooshes out a breath and then sinks back against the side of the bed, letting his legs fold under him so he ends up sitting on the floor. “Okay, good, because for a second there I thought I’d have to reactivate my plotting for three-sixty monitoring on the exits in this place. Also, I thought your mom said she was going to spend today catching up on sleep and the forensic reports on all the Blackwood bodies.”

They really do need to finish clearing those out before they pick any more fights. Normally Stiles isn’t going to fuss too much about extra corpses, so long as the reason they exist is because his pack’s survived, but there does come a point where sheer freezer space is an issue. And just because the Argents are _still_ bringing over their home cooking every night so that space isn’t needed for a selection of Trader Joe’s frozen finest doesn’t mean Stiles is going to skate on that.

Scott hasn’t said anything. Stiles looks over at him and he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg down and one tucked under him, still folding up and sorting clothes. He does grin for a second when he gets to the (overpriced because of the nostalgia upcharge) Green Power Ranger tee Stiles got for him, but otherwise he’s got his focused-on-duty face on. “I didn’t mean she was going to sneak out and scoop another fight out from under us again,” Stiles says, while awkwardly and belatedly hunching up. “I just was…um, surprised she’s going out for something like that? She was yawning all through dinner yesterday, and while I’d like to blame my less-than-scintillating Lovecraft references, I…don’t think that was it.”

“I think she needed the fresh air,” Scott says after a moment, still concentrating on the clothes. His brow furrows as he holds up a piece of admittedly ambiguous clothing, but then, before Stiles can explain that despite the odd seams, that’s actually a woman’s high-tech sweat-wicking bralette, he figures it out and puts it on top of a pile of bras. “I know she’s still tired, but I think she’s caught up enough that she’s getting antsy, and…I don’t know if it’s a good idea for her to go back to work yet? I mean, it’s still kind of soon, right? We should still be busy trying to find a new rental and filing police reports, so people would think it looked weird for her to be back already.”

“Are you asking me whether I agree, or asking me whether there are holes in the cover story?” Stiles asks, watching the other man’s face. 

The thing with Scott these days is smell and heartbeat aren’t good indicators. They never were spot-on, because he can be throwing off every sign in the book that he’s terrified and still his brain somehow comes up with ‘sucker-punch enemy while screaming for you to run,’ but ever since they came to Beacon Hills, there’s just such a—a baseline of _fear_ that trying to distinguish anything else in the noise takes forever. And as far as Stiles can tell, knowing once and for all that his dad’s dead did not get rid of that.

But for once, Scott seems pretty calm. He does look surprised that Stiles is asking him a question, but more along the lines of being surprised Stiles doesn’t immediately follow what he’s thinking. “I guess both? I haven’t really been out much either, so I haven’t been talking to a ton of people, but Allison says she overheard some stuff at Heather’s graduation party.”

Heather’s a girl in their economics class, and in terms of high school hierarchy, she’d fallen squarely in the middle, not popular enough to be a tastemaker but not outsider enough to draw immediate attention to anything she did, so Stiles had ignored her. He makes a note to change that. “Well, I don’t know how much weight I’d put on high-school gossip. I mean, we’re not even in high school anymore.”

Scott looks down at Stiles, startled, and for a second Stiles thinks he might bolt. But then the corner of Scott’s mouth tugs, and his head dips, and he starts chuckling. He puts down the blouse he’s folding. “Wow. Right, yeah, we really did graduate. I wasn’t imagining that.”

“Nope, buddy, you didn’t,” Stiles says. He scoots over and gives Scott’s shin a pat. “Degree and everything. It was real. I didn’t even have to hack your test scores.”

“You did hack my transfer credits,” Scott points out.

“Okay, but that’s because the rules on those are stupid and I was just making sure what you did matched up with what got transferred. And anyway, you did the ACT and all your exams yourself, so you can’t blame me for those,” Stiles points back.

Scott smiles at him, and it’s real too. But it’s a little thin, and starts to fade almost immediately as Scott’s eyes track back to the clothes on the bed. He reaches out and smooths one stack, then scoops it up and gets off the bed and goes over to the dresser. “I think it’s good that Mom’s getting out,” he says quietly, putting the clothes in a drawer. “She doesn’t need to just watch over me all day, and even if she’s not going back to work yet, she should…she should get out.”

“Yeah, no, I wasn’t saying we should keep her in or anything like that,” Stiles hurriedly says. “I just—was uninformed. That’s all.”

“And you’re worried what that means, since usually when she stops talking to us, it’s a bad thing,” Scott says. Simple and straightforward, not accusing anybody. He turns around, leans over to get the clothes Stiles hands to him, and puts them away too. “Yeah, I know, but I’ve been talking with Mom, a little, and…we’re going to have to figure it out, all of that. I mean, she wants me to think about going to UC-Davis, if I’m really going to try and make the vet thing work. If I do that, we’re going to have to get used to not being in the same town.”

That’s news to Stiles—the not going with Scott, not the UC-Davis thing. “Why?”

“Well, because…she can’t move around with me forever, Stiles,” Scott says, frowning. He closes the drawer and then turns to face Stiles. “She’s put her whole life on hold for me since Dad—since he left the first time, and she shouldn’t have to keep doing that now that he’s dead.”

“I mean, yeah, that sounds great,” Stiles says. “I wasn’t saying it didn’t. I just—is she going to stay here, then?”

Scott shrugs. “I think she’s thinking about it,” he says. He’s starting to smell worried. “I’m hoping that’s because of Allison’s parents, and not because she still…thinks she’s gotta make sure about Dad.”

“You think Allison’s parents are a good idea?” Stiles says, blinking. Then puts his hand out, getting up, as Scott cocks his head. “Look, obviously, better idea than continuing the now non-existent mission, but…it’s just a lot of work, bringing newbies up to speed. And it’s not like they don’t come with baggage too, you know.”

“Yeah, Allison’s been keeping me up to date on what she and her parents are finding in Gerard’s stuff,” Scott says after a moment. He isn’t exactly challenging Stiles on it, but at the same time, he’s making a point with how he says that.

A couple points, and Stiles debates whether he really wants to get into them when really, all he was planning to do was drop off the shopping results and get a quick happy-thanks moment with the McCalls. But okay, Scott is his friend, and compared to what they’ve been through before this, Stiles shouldn’t be shying from a couple conversation landmines.

“I guess I should acknowledge that Dad’s actually dating Talia Hale, or so he claims, and so it’s not like I don’t have my own baggage search-and-destroy plans,” he finally says. He sees a glimmer of amusement in Scott’s eyes, but it’s not quite a change in mood and so he keeps going. “And I appreciate Allison’s suggestion about putting some of Gerard’s stuff up on eBay under fake accounts. It’s a pretty slick way to make it look like his family’s not the only one who might have his things, but keep all the leads to ourselves.”

“That was Derek’s idea, actually,” Scott says. “He says he does stuff like that to get intel on people he faces off against in some of his sketchier games.”

“Okay, now you’re just poking,” Stiles says. “People think you’re the _nice_ one.”

Scott laughs, leaning back against the dresser. “He’s actually kind of over you, I think,” he says. “I don’t think he wants to kill you anymore.”

“He couldn’t kill me even when he wanted to,” Stiles mutters. Then catches Scott frowning at him again. He starts to ask what’s the matter and Scott’s expression changes, the way it does when he’s going to pin Stiles down on something, and Stiles can’t help himself. That’s the annoying thing about Scott, he doesn’t even have to _ask_ at this point to get Stiles to spill his guts. “Kind of surprised since the rest of his family still seems to want to go at me for Peter.”

“I was going to ask about that,” Scott says, making it worse with how he doesn’t even dwell on his telepathic ability to remove the brain-mouth filter from Stiles’ guilt complex. “I thought your dad and Talia had talked about all of that, and they got that magic’s really complicated and it’s not like you set Peter up on purpose to get taken over by my dad. Dad was just—that stuff he and the Whittemore guy did, it was really fucked-up, and look, if you want, I can talk to them about it.”

“That is absolutely not necessary,” Stiles immediately says.

Scott’s expression stays calm, with just a little wrinkle between his brows about why Stiles won’t let him help, but the rest of him is tensing up, shoulders down to the toes he’s curling against the carpet. Which means it’s unconscious. “I’m okay to talk about it, you know,” he says quietly. “I mean—I’m not going to like it, but I might be the only other person who kind of knows how Peter feels, and if it’d help—”

“Peter’s got help. He’s got plenty of help, and if he wants more from us, Dad and I have made it super-super clear he just has to ask,” Stiles says sharply. Then he takes a breath and tries to will his face to stop feeling so stiff. “I just…think he knows you got hit too, and if he wanted to compare notes, he’d ask. Since he’s not, maybe he has a reason why not, and you don’t want to push him, right? Not after that.”

“Oh. Oh, right,” Scott says, looking a little guilty. “Okay, so I’ll just not mention it.”

“Not for now,” Stiles agrees. “And honestly, I think that whole thing isn’t really about your dad anyway, so I would just take that whole section off your sin list, Scott. It’s not your problem.”

“I know, but it’s your problem, and I know I’ve been kind of messed-up but I’m still here for you,” Scott says stubbornly. “I want to get back to that—get back to actually being friends, and not just me trying to help Mom and you trying to help us. Because we get that now, you know? We get that.”

“I—yeah. Yeah, we do.” Stiles has to hang back for a couple seconds, because it is so _annoying_ when Scott makes him want to curl up around the guy and make little whining noises like some idiot puppy, but he’s a grown werewolf. He can fight that down, and hold his head up, and go over and give Scott a manly clap on the shoulder because seriously, last thing Scott needs to add to his load. “Well, look, you and your mom are talking, I guess that’s the main thing. If she goes back to work or if she just leaves it another week, it’s got to be whatever makes sense to her, right? We can deal with whatever comes up in the meantime.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Scott says, though he’s still a little reluctant. He ducks his head and runs one hand through his hair, then gives Stiles a sideways look. “Maybe I’m getting stir-crazy. Mom asked if I wanted to come along, actually, but I just…I didn’t sleep well last night, and you know I’m not that great with runes even when I have gotten sleep. So I took a nap, but then when I woke up and she wasn’t around, I just…but I should get used to that. I can’t have her to myself all the time. That’s what Dad thought.”

“I think that’s one sentence I don’t want to see ending up as the bumper sticker to our lives,” Stiles says after a second. “You know what, I was going over to the hospital to see how the morgue is after that last scouring spell. You want to come? Maybe you could talk to some of the nurses, spread some friendly misinformation.”

“You know I don’t like lying to people,” Scott says, but he’s grinning a little as he shakes his head. He pushes off the dresser, leaning into the hand Stiles still has on his shoulder, and then he pivots as Stiles backs off so that they’re shoulder-to-shoulder, just like usual. “I don’t have anything else to do. But seriously, what are you _really_ going over there for? I thought the hospital was totally cleared out.”

* * *

“Of course I believe you,” Peter says when Stiles and Scott find him hanging around in the morgue, exactly as promised by Laura. “I also believe that, as a taxpayer and a representative of the bank who’s underwriting the loan to repair this part of the hospital, I have a right to inspect the work quality myself.”

“And how that passes conflict of interest checks, I’d like to know,” Stiles mutters. 

He stalks past Peter, trying not to notice how the man tenses—he’s already way across the room—and goes over to the part of the floor that’s still ringed by traffic cones and warning tape. Or he would, except that Derek Hale is in his way.

“It does because Mom’s on the board, not part of the bank’s management, and she recuses herself whenever there’s a decision about Peter’s firm,” Derek says, glowering at Stiles.

Peter blinks hard, clearly not expecting that, and Scott steps smoothly into the opening, coming up behind Stiles and smiling at Derek. “Hey, I thought you were still busy trying to sign up for classes? Did you just get back?”

Derek has a really hard time switching expressions quickly, and for a second it honestly looks like his eyebrows might get stuck. Then they straighten out into a hilariously hesitant face, while his hands come out of the leather coat and sort of fidget by his hips. “Turns out I don’t have to go up there in person, they fixed whatever in their system still thought I was suspended.”

“Meaning I called them, and reminded them of the consequences of breaching our settlement agreement,” Peter says dryly. He’s walking in an odd zigzag, like he wants to come over but keeps trying to figure out if he can do it without actually narrowing the distance between himself and Stiles. He’s got a little folded piece of paper in his hand that he hurriedly sticks into his pocket when Stiles looks at his hand. “What are you doing? I thought you said you’d already done the evil-spirits cleansing ritual.”

“The…what?” Stiles says, halfway through fanning out his incense sticks.

For one second, Peter looks as if the world has personally betrayed him. Then he takes a deep breath and transfers that look to Derek, who sticks his hands back in his coat. “That’s what he said it did,” Derek mutters.

“Did we have a conversation at some point?” Stiles says, frowning. “I mean, besides when I explained to you that just watching me buy wolfsbane online doesn’t qualify you to make medicine for Scott, and that I will straight up murder you if you ask again?”

“Please don’t do that,” Scott sighs. “Also, I was explaining to Derek why you and your dad were out that one night.”

Well, Stiles can’t get mad at Scott, even if he wishes the Hales’ Supernatural 101 curriculum would stick to what he’s talked about with his dad. “Oh, so…you mean the purification ritual.”

“I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure how Derek was inaccurate here,” Peter says after a second. 

He’s gotten about three feet closer, but his heartbeat still jumps and his body still tenses up whenever Stiles so much as twitches in his direction. He’s got a suit-jacket thrown over his shoulders, but under that he’s got a casual buttondown and jeans that, while tailored, aren’t form-fitting. Then, as Stiles sighs and prepares to explain (if, somehow, this spirals into a situation later, and from what he knows of the Hales so far, he won’t rule that out, he is not going to be blamed for _bad teaching_ ), Peter reaches into his pocket and takes out a sling. It’s lightweight and sleek and probably cost an absurd amount of money for something that he’ll need for another two weeks, tops, based on his medical reports. But when he slips it over his head and settles his left arm in it, there’s still that genuine trace of relief in his scent.

“The ritual Dad and Jordan and I did before was just to clear up any lingering residue from the kanima spell,” Stiles says. He detaches the tape from one of the cones and steps into the little ring, then pokes at the floor with his toe. He can still smell a little wetness under the newly-laid flooring, but nothing shifts underfoot and he figures it’s safe to stand on. “A kanima’s not actually an evil spirit. I mean, first of all, it’s not a spirit, it’s an actual corporeal being, and second, it’s only as evil as the person using it.”

“Well, if I get what you said, Whittemore killed Scott’s dad except he didn’t totally kill him, because he wanted him to know he wasn’t going to get resurrected because this crazy dragon lizard was going to kill anybody who tried,” Derek says. He does look a little worriedly at Scott, but not till after he says Scott’s name, and it doesn’t stop him from finishing up. “Sounds evil to me.”

Stiles opens his mouth, clocks Scott staring a plea at him and—almost dishes out some truth to Derek anyway. But he doesn’t do that, and not because Scott’s asking him to, once again, ignore the uninformed peanut gallery, but because of how tired Scott suddenly smells. The two of them have been going back and forth for as long as they’ve known each other how to lower the level of stupidity in the world and Stiles has always thought that that was an undying element of their friendship, but…he’s giving Scott a break here. Not Derek.

“Anyway, the point is, we scrubbed the kanima but we didn’t do anything besides that. Now I’m doing some extra stuff to try to avoid a repeat, because this town’s still kind of on people’s radar and Scott’s mom should be able to have a coffee without worrying about somebody jumping her,” Stiles finally says. 

“Is she coming back to work?” Derek says, in what he must think is a whisper. He also shifts closer to Scott, as if that somehow correlates with how well Peter can eavesdrop. 

Scott shrugs. He smells uncomfortable, but then he gives Stiles a covert hand-wave to not come over. Stiles is obviously going to keep an eye on it, but…things to do. He swings his bag around and unzips it.

“Does she make a habit of having coffee in what’s supposed to be a sterile environment?” Peter asks. He’s also coming closer, having apparently resolved whatever geometric calculations he needed to do in order to get from his side to Stiles’ side of the room.

“It’s a morgue,” Stiles mutters, counting out incense sticks. “It’s not like she’s going to catch a disease, and you just need your samples to stay uncontaminated, not the whole body.”

“You’re disease-proof?” Peter says, sounding startled enough that Stiles looks up again. He manages to catch the other man’s face twitching; Peter’s scent flares with nerves and annoyance, and then Peter pointedly raises his chin. “Pure curiosity, I’ll admit. From what I’ve seen so far of your healing, it seems to mostly address injuries. That doesn’t obviously mean an altered immune system.”

“Laura was thinking about that,” Derek breaks in. “She was saying if you look at it one way, bacteria and viruses are just…”

Then his shoulders shift back and spread out, defensive but annoyed about it, as Peter continues his death stare. Peter spares a second to throw a side-glance to Stiles, then jerks himself back, doubling down on the silent _shut up_ to Derek even though there is no way he can hide what he’s doing.

“Just what?” Stiles asks. “No, I’m really interested now. We don’t get people trying to think of us as science, this is actually kind of cool.”

“Yeah, we don’t get sick, really,” Scott says almost at the same time, looking worriedly around the room. “I think if you want to—”

“She just said if you get down to the cellular level, it’s basically like a fight so if you heal from somebody beating you up, it might make sense that your cells also heal faster when viruses try to rip them open,” Derek abruptly says. He tenses up at the same time, eyeing Peter, and when Peter just draws back into a tight frown and glances irritably away, he sags noticeably.

“That is kind of cool,” Scott says. Then ducks his head as Derek looks at him, surprised. “I mean, it’s not that far off—”

This is not going where Stiles wanted it to go, and anyway—anyway, he was going to give Scott a break. The poor guy’s still trying to put his life back together and the last thing he needs is to try and figure out which game Stiles is running, when that was never really his responsibility anyway. “The point is, if you were thinking rabies or canine distemper, maybe you should go back to the drawing board on that one.”

Derek inhales sharply, glancing at Peter. But for some reason, he looks annoyed when Peter beats him to the retort. “I’m not sure why you’re bringing up that idea, Stiles. It’s as if you feel unsafe around us, and that seems ridiculous,” Peter says dryly, and then he lifts his arm in the sling. “We’re hardly in that position.”

“Okay,” Derek says, pitching his voice weirdly between the mutter he seems to wish he could go with and the loud voice he seems to think he needs. “Look, we just came to see if things here were done.”

“They’re not. I mean, it’s just that we have to do a couple rounds of this because that’s how the magic works,” Scott says. He steps up between Derek and Peter—he flinches when Peter promptly moves back—and then gestures towards the office door. “That’s all we came here to do, it’s not really a big deal. Would it help if we sat down and I talked you through what we were going to do? Stiles needs to concentrate anyway.”

“I could—” _do this with half the building falling on our heads, like in Santa Fe_ Stiles starts to say. Would prefer to say. 

Except Scott gives him another look, and once again, it’s not the look so much as the underlying signs: circles under his eyes, a slight strained vibe to his expression, sourness in his scent, and even though all of that should have long since gone away (speaking of werewolf healing), it hasn’t. So Stiles shuts his mouth, and Scott nods, so plainly grateful, that it’s a couple seconds after the three of them go into the office that Stiles is able to pull himself together enough to concentrate on the spellwork.

He hopes his dad and Scott’s mom are at least in better shape. Then he winces, realizing how selfish that is. Honestly, he’s the least affected of all of them and he should be able to put up with some snarky asshole. He shouldn’t need Scott to step in and redirect the conversation, and…

…they’re going to have to stay here for a while longer. It’d be—cleaner, if they could just pack up and leave and not have to think about how to fit in the Hales without giving the important things away, but that’s not an option. So Stiles is going to have to step up his game and figure out how to handle things until the rest of his pack are okay again. He can do that—he’s _going_ to do that.

* * *

By the time Stiles finishes up with the first layer of protections, Derek and Peter have disappeared. “Peter had to get to some appointment, and Derek’s his ride,” Scott explains. “Because of his arm.”

“It’s his left one and he didn’t seem like it bothered him that much,” Stiles mutters. 

“He’s on a ton of painkillers,” Scott says, frowning. “Didn’t you smell that?”

Stiles blinks and thinks about it. “Oh, yeah, but…again, didn’t seem like they affected him that much. His mouth, anyway.”

“I don’t think he’s faking. Derek wasn’t acting like it, anyway—he was trying to get Peter to leave so they could get it over with before Peter had to take the next dose, and Peter seemed pretty annoyed that Derek let that slip,” Scott says, frowning even more. He gets up as Stiles finds out he’s on his last tissue, then goes over to Melissa’s desk and roots around till he turns up a fresh box. “Is that what you’re worried about? Why would Peter be faking how hurt he was when we basically saw all of that?”

“I’m not saying he is faking, I’m just—I don’t know, I feel like he’s the kind of guy who always has a very convenient state of health,” Stiles says, taking the tissue and wiping off his fingertips. Personally, he’s pretty sure that if Peter had made a point of coming over and had also made sure via Laura to get Stiles to come too, Peter’s not going to suddenly turn around and lose interest. Which has nothing to do with how hurt or not hurt he is, and Stiles doesn’t know why they even need to discuss that. “You know, like I’m going to sneeze so I can figure out whether you’re carrying hand sanitizer, but then I’m going to suddenly leave when you ask me how I’m feeling because I don’t want you to figure out if it’s allergies or a cold.”

Scott mulls that over for a couple seconds before he looks up. “Honestly, Stiles, I’m not sure what you mean.”

“It’s okay,” Stiles says after a moment, holding back a sigh. He tosses the used tissue into the wastebin and then waves for Scott to come over. When the other man’s close enough, he slings one arm over Scott’s shoulders. “I’m not really worried anyway. So Peter wants to know what we’re doing, so I’m sure Dad and Talia Hale are supposed to have another ‘date’ soon and they can hash out what level of need-to-know we’re operating with here. So we still need to drop some nuggets for the hospital gossips, to speak about things that are more important than Peter’s plans.”

“Oh, yeah, Derek said there’s this big barbecue the hospital does every summer,” Scott says. They’re walking out the door, and it’s not quite wide enough for them to do it together, so Stiles has to let go of him and that also means Scott doesn’t feel it when Stiles’ step stutters. “It’s next week. I still think Mom might not want to work, but if shes wants to get out of the house, I thought that actually might be easier on her than patrolling with your dad. I was going to ask her if she wanted to at least send over some food…what’s the matter?”

The thing is, even if Scott misses the body language tells, he knows Stiles’ scent fluctuations way too well. “I guess I’m just wondering where we’re getting that kind of food?” Stiles asks, thinking quickly. “Are we leaning on the Argents for that?”

He guessed right: Scott sighs but it’s a tolerant, amused sigh. “I can cook too,” he says.

“I know you can. I’m just saying, since it seems to make them feel better about how every time they bring over something out of ol’ Gramps Argent’s estate, it turns out to be about how he screwed over somebody we know,” Stiles says, shrugging. He lets Scott get ahead of him and lead the way. In theory, he knows the hospital’s layout, but he hasn’t actually gotten to spend much time here, given how hard Scott’s mom had insisted on them each sticking to their own investigation. “Your mom doesn’t seem to mind either.”

“Yeah, I think she appreciates not having to worry about the food situation. I know it’s not like we’ll die of high cholesterol, but I think because she started out as a nurse, she still feels bad whenever we end up frozen food a lot,” Scott says. They go down the hall and take a left, and then another left, and then Scott slows down. Since they’re heading out into the parking lot, Stiles thinks the other man might be rethinking a quick exit and wanting to go back and socialize. “The bank Derek’s mom works for actually always pays for the drinks, so Derek was saying if I just wanted to come help unload those with him and his sisters, that might be easiest.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Freeloaders always want to make more freeloaders.”

“I don’t think it’s freeloading. They volunteer and help serve up drinks,” Scott says, turning and looking at Stiles. He starts to say something else, then cuts himself off, with that expression on his face where he’s debating between lying and being offensive (at least, what he thinks is offensive). “Are…you okay?”

“What?” Stiles says. He blinks. “I mean, with the whole co-opting into their PR campaign? Look, Scott, if you think it’ll help your mom’s rep and it’s also free—”

Scott grimaces. “You know, if you don’t want to hear about Derek’s family, you can just tell me. I’ll stop bringing them up.”

“Um, I…appreciate that, because our relationship is based on open and constant communication and I know how much of a sacrifice that would be for you, but…I’m not super-sensitive about them,” Stiles says. He honestly has no idea where this hairpin turn in the conversation came from, and nothing in Scott’s look, smell, or heartbeat is giving him any clues. “I’m not sure what gave you that idea, but—okay, fine, Derek is a living, breathing reminder that you and Dad are _totally_ right when you say I’m way too invested in having the last word, but I’m not gonna break out into hives just because you…kind of get along with him.”

“We’re dating,” Scott says, a little flushed, a little amused. Of course he can’t stick with the smartass for very long and dips his head, embarrassment winning out as he rubs the side of his neck. “Well, not really, just talking about it…trying to sort out some stuff but I just want to make sure his mom and your dad aren’t an issue.”

“Dad’s a grown man and he can make choices about our allies so long as I get to commentate on them,” Stiles says. “You know you don’t have to date Derek to deal with that whole situation, right?”

Scott gives him a sharp look, and one that lasts long enough for Stiles to start shifting in place. It’s never that Scott judges him, so much that Scott seems to understand exactly what Stiles is really trying to say, even if—especially if the words aren’t working. And if Stiles is actually kind of actively trying to not make the words work. 

“I know, that’s why I want to work through that before we really start anything,” Scott finally says. “I wasn’t…really thinking straight. I did some things I’m not really…I wish I hadn’t, and now that Mom and I don’t have to worry about Dad coming up again, I don’t have any excuses to not get my head right.”

“You know—” Stiles pauses, rethinks his tone and phrasing “—you know…things were really fucked-up. I mean, _really_ fucked. So, you know, werewolf healing? It doesn’t tackle that.”

For a second Scott stares at him blankly, and then, suddenly, a smile. And an arm over Stiles’ neck, and a laughing rumble in his ear. Stiles snorts and gives Scott a half-hearted shove to the chest, then allows the other man to just drag him down the hall.

“So you really don’t have a problem with Derek’s mom,” Scott says, after they’ve gone a few yards.

“I…have problems with her that don’t really have to do with what she’s doing with my _dad_. Other than the fact that she makes one wrong move with him and that bank of hers isn’t going to mean a thing,” Stiles says slowly. He bumps his head against Scott’s jaw, hears the subvocal chuckle that doesn’t actually make it out of Scott’s throat. “But look, you don’t need to worry about that. And helping with the drinks, probably not a big deal. Might even convince people we’re not Mob informants on the run. It’s fine, okay, you do what you need to do and I’ll just keep on with the clean-up work. Deal?”

“Deal,” Scott says.

* * *

Obviously, making a deal with Scott doesn’t mean Stiles is agreeing to back off on figuring out whatever Peter’s up to. But for some reason, his father seems unconvinced that there’s even anything to worry about, even though Peter clearly is learning himself up on magic.

“Yeah, kid, I’m sure Talia gave me back all the books Whittemore had and they don’t have any missing pages,” his dad says later that night. “Probably because I watched you check them against the inventory list.”

“I did?” Stiles says.

His dad looks up from where he’s going over some files with Jordan, his brow creasing. “The day after, Talia had us scrubbing everything that could have triggered Peter’s possess—”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, right,” Stiles mutters, poking at his bowl. “Man, we’re going to be owing favors to Marin and Alan for years. Tara says they used five pounds of rock salt alone.”

“What are you talking about? She knows that because that was the station card they put all of that on, and now she’s gotta figure out how to hide it without looking like we were embezzling,” Jordan says. He’s sinking lower and lower in his chair, holding up a piece of paper and peering at it as if it’s got invisible handwriting he’s trying to decipher. “Seeing as we didn’t bill Marin for handling the body disposal for most of her old pack, I think we’re actually even.”

“Well, that’s because you’re an uncultured hellhound who has no idea how we true-up with druids,” Stiles says.

Jordan flicks the paper aside and stares at Stiles. “There something wrong with your ice cream? Because maybe it’s my unevolved hellhound tongue, but homemade mint chip works for me and I’m more than happy to be the pack waste disposal when it comes to food, as I’ve said before.”

“Okay, I think we’ve spent enough time tonight trying to clear our backlog,” Stiles’ dad says loudly. He slaps one hand against his knee, then drops his file and pushes back from the table. Gets up, then turns and looks at Jordan, who stops mid-getting up and raises his brows. “Not you, you actually get paid to process this paperwork. C’mon, Stiles. I think you’re still tired from graduation, time to hit the sack.”

“Because it was so much work walking around in a stupid gown and making sure Scott didn’t lose his hat,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes.

His dad ignores him and picks up his bowl. Which Stiles objects to, because the ice cream actually is good and not the problem and he wanted it and—is a complete sucker. When he reaches for it, his dad snorts and leans over and puts one hand on the back of his neck, just long enough to give him a quick tug. Not even that hard, but it’s enough to trigger instinct and make him go floppy. His dad, of course, was waiting for that and loops a hand under his arm to pull him up and off the couch.

“Don’t I at least get ice cream for this?” Jordan’s grumbling as Stiles’ dad pulls him out of the room.

“Yeah, sure, it’s in the freezer,” Stiles’ dad says. And then, when Stiles gives him a thumbs-up, looks totally unimpressed. “Kid—”

“I’m fine.” Once they get into the hall, Stiles shakes off his childhood enough to pull out of his dad’s grip and stand on his own two feet. His shirt got bunched up under his armpits and he takes a second to straighten that out. “Really. I just forgot, there was a lot that happened and I just—”

His dad doesn’t believe him for a second. “This about Talia and me?”

“No,” Stiles says immediately. Then sighs and ducks his head, because he knows his dad knows that’s a dead giveaway he’s lying. “I mean…not really. I mean, you and she seem to get along, now that we’re all clear about what we want from each other, and she’s a lot less megalomaniac than the town gossip makes out. I mean, as far as I can tell, she really just wants control over her immediate surroundings and I can get that.”

“That’s a lot of meaning in there,” his father says dryly. He glances back at the other room, where Jordan is being annoyingly loud about shuffling papers, and then looks at Stiles. “You know, the whole idea is we take some time and put something in place that’ll hold, so if anyone else Whittemore clued in comes looking, we can be sure they don’t find anything. So—”

“It doesn’t have to happen overnight and I’m not a cop anyway and my deep-seated contrarian tendencies probably make me a terrible person for investigating noise complaints,” Stiles says. “Yeah, I know. I _mean_ , I’m not so sure Jordan’s great either, he’s always putting past record over actual hard evidence like, I don’t know, decibel readings, but…okay. Okay. I’m pushing it.”

His dad eyes him. And then, still eyeing him, reaches out and wraps one arm around Stiles’ head and pulls him in. Stiles yelps and then pushes at him, and his dad just goes on and puts his chin on top of Stiles’ head and starts making that rumbling noise he keeps trying to claim isn’t a ‘purr’ because for some reason, they have to define themselves against wolf biology even though they are _supernatural creatures_.

“Son, I can hear you thinking,” his dad mutters.

“I’m.” Then Stiles stops and sighs. And okay, leans against the other man for a second. He’s not tired, not really—he’s gotten more sleep in the past couple weeks than he has in the past year—but it’s kind of…nice to just…not have some plan against somebody trying to kill them cooking in the back of his head. Oh, right. “I am on board, Dad. Honestly. I know Scott and his mom need the time, and as places go, this is okay, now that we’re sure all the undead werewolves are gone, and I just…I just want to make sure we get the time. You know, no more surprises.”

“Yeah, I know. But I think we’ve gone over the town pretty well,” his dad points out. He rests on Stiles’ head a second longer, then unwinds his arm and backs up enough to look Stiles in the eye. “And I think you think that too, so it’s got to be something new eating at you. So you need to tell me what it is, because if this is your idea of giving me time to rest up too, let me tell you that worrying you’re going off on your own is the _least_ restful idea—”

Stiles makes a face. “Dad.”

“Kid.” His father keeps looking at him.

“Okay. Okay—okay! Stop with the looks already, I just…I just want to make sure,” Stiles says. He gives his dad a push, which doesn’t move the man at all, and then backs up, rubbing at the top of his head. He can still feel a warmer spot where his dad’s chin was. “Because I know it was a bad idea to let Peter have alone time with those books, and I know we have them all back, but I…just want to make sure nothing else happens. Since we’ve already got the whole how-many-people-did-Gerard-Argent-piss-off black box.”

“Like what?” his dad asks, suddenly smelling worried. “Like you think Peter’s going to get possessed again?”

“What? No. If something can get into him after me and Marin and Alan all did our thing, that’s the kind of thing where I’m honestly wondering _why_ since it’ll be powered up enough to do way more than possess people,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “No, I just—I just want—I mean, in case—”

His dad frowns. “Do you think the problem’s Peter?”

“I—probably not.” The worry in his father’s scent goes up and Stiles catches the way the man’s hand twitches towards his pocket. “No, not really, don’t—please don’t call Talia. I don’t think he’s turning into a druid or anything, he doesn’t smell that self-destructive, I just…get the idea he wants to know what happened to him.”

“Well, that’s probably because he does,” his dad says, looking at him oddly. “He and Talia have both asked, so they know what to avoid.”

“Yeah, I know, and before you start freaking out, I _do_ remember that conversation happened. It’s not—I just want to know my fuck-up there isn’t going to snowball, Dad,” Stiles says, waving his hand off to the side. Then he catches himself and pulls in his arm. “Peter’s just been poking around some and asking some other questions and I just want to make sure I didn’t miss something.”

“Do you want me to ask Talia to ask him about it?” his father asks. “Because if something else is happening to him and it’s related, we should stop it fast.”

Stiles grimaces again. “No, look, I think he’s fine, he’s just…kind of…trying to check what I’m doing. Like he thinks I did it wrong.”

“Sounds like I should talk to Talia. Yeah, you hadn’t finished looking into that spell yet, but you didn’t know those pages existed when you left him, and nobody knew exactly what Whittemore had set up. Nobody could’ve known either,” his dad says, reaching into his pocket.

“No, wait, look—” Stiles grabs his arm and stops him from getting out his phone “—don’t call her, that’s just going to get Peter—he blames me, fine, I don’t actually care. It’s not like I know him that well, and I just want to make sure he doesn’t mess around with my spellwork when he’s checking it over. That’s all. Really.”

His father’s eyes narrow a little, and Stiles almost adds some more, but just manages to hold himself back. Which turns out to be the right move, since finally his dad sighs and moves his hand away from his pocket. “This doesn’t mean I won’t call later, if things go downhill,” he says. “We actually got some things cleared up and…I think it’s been good for us, all of us. So if there’s a problem, I don’t want us to sit on it. _That_ was what we were doing wrong, you know.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I should’ve told you about Scott, and about his mom, a lot earlier,” Stiles says, dropping his eyes.

“Kid, that wasn’t all on you. You’re eighteen,” his dad says, sighing again. He moves his arm and for a second Stiles thinks he’s getting another head-grab, but in the end, his dad just ruffles his hair. “Well, look, take a night off. You get so deep into your research sometimes, I think just taking a break is what you need to clear things up.”

“Okay, okay,” Stiles says. He steps back and his father starts to turn, and he clears his throat. “Um, but…ice cream?”

“What?” his dad says. Then looks at the bowl in his hand. “Thought you didn’t want it?”

“Okay, look, that is a blatant _lie_ , you’re not even trying to control your heartbeat—” Stiles says, lunging for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For people not living in the U.S., there's enough variation between each state's educational standards that not everything transfers automatically at the high school level (i.e. some states think other states aren't putting enough into their coursework).
> 
> When grown dogs or cats "scruff" their offspring, it triggers a reflex that makes the babies go slack so they can be carried by the neck without being injured.


	3. Chapter 3

One night’s sleep and yes, a bowl of ice cream later, Stiles wakes up refreshed and with a new viewpoint on things. Which is why he walks into that storage building Peter’s law firm uses two hours later with a backpack full of protection charms and a paralegal ID card.

“Well-played,” Peter says, after he’s gotten over the first shock of Stiles then walking into a storage room and finding him spritzing the boxes with what smells like vervain-infused water. “I assume you made that card before and just never got around to using it?” 

“Yeah,” Stiles says, startled enough by Peter’s appearance that he doesn’t think to lie. Then he sniffs harder. “Wait a second, you don’t smell—you’re wearing _de-scenter_.”

Peter blinks once, and then his expression resets to highly satisfied. “Why, yes, I am. It’s very helpful of you to label your bottles so clearly.”

“You—you swiped that from me?” Stiles says. A little weakly, and that’s annoying because that just makes Peter look even smugger, but for a second there Stiles had actually thought Peter had figured out how to make it and that’s just downright frightening. 

“If by that, you mean I walked into your kitchen and noticed there was a bottle sitting by the sink, right next to a bottle of hand soap that was clearly for communal use…then yes, that qualifies as ‘swiping’ it from you,” Peter says loftily. He gives his spray bottle another shake. “Well, what brings you here, Stiles? More remedial work?”

Something’s wrong with this picture, and it’s not just Peter lording it over him. “We already checked here,” Stiles says, narrowing his eyes. “Why would you think we needed to do anything else?”

Peter falters, the bottle lowering, and his eyes start to flick downwards. Stiles steps forward and Peter looks sharply up, then hastily steps back. Then curses as he stumbles into a box. He’s got his other arm in that sling and when he tries to throw it out as a counterbalance, the sling catches it up short and skews him even more. His leg knocks into another box and he’s going to go over so Stiles hops forward and grabs his wrist.

For a second, Peter steadies. Then his head comes up and he sees who’s steadying him, and his pupils blow out. He can’t get his wrist out of Stiles’ grip fast enough, and the only reason he doesn’t fall over the boxes this time is because he runs into a stack of them that are too high. So instead he hisses and slumps against them, glowering at Stiles.

His heartbeat, Stiles realizes. That’d been what was off. The whole time he was looking and smelling smug, his heartbeat had been going too fast.

“Well, perhaps because I don’t particularly trust you,” Peter mutters. He pushes himself off the boxes and moves a few inches back. His left leg seems a little stiff and Stiles doesn’t remember that being anything but bruised. “Seeing as we still don’t know how many security breaches you’ve caused.”

Stiles takes a quick glance to the side—there’s a bag on the floor, unzipped to show a tablet, a folder of papers and no obvious weapons—and then steps back. Peter’s heartbeat immediately slows. “You know we don’t want to kill you, don’t you?” Stiles says.

“I know you’ve said that, but I don’t know if I trust that either,” Peter snaps. Then sucks his breath. He didn’t mean to say that, but the dirty look he follows it up with tells Stiles it wasn’t because he was trying to not offend Stiles. “From what I’ve seen so far, collateral damage doesn’t seem as if it’s something you actively try to avoid.”

“You know, actually, we do? I was actually _trying_ to hide this kind of thing from you, except you kept having to notice what I was doing,” Stiles says, waving the ID card.

“Because you were trying to break into my firm!” Peter retorts. He gestures at the boxes with the spray bottle. “How exactly was I supposed to _not_ notice that?”

“So why didn’t you just report it to the police!” Stiles snaps. “That’s what normal people do.”

“Because your _father_ is the sheriff, and obviously, there was something bigger going on and I wasn’t going to be that fool!” Peter shouts. Then coughs roughly. Then again, hard enough that he has to put the bottle down on a nearby box and catch his breath. He doesn’t sound like he’s got a chest infection, but at this range, the de-scenter doesn’t work well and there’s a distinct whiff of pain in his scent. “Though that reminds me, he did tell me now that he’s regularly having dinner with my sister that I can just let him know if anything odd is happening and he’ll take care of it for me.”

This is…not working. Stiles gets that, and backs up a little farther. Peter stops breathing so hard but is still trying to get something out of his pocket, and Stiles has to swallow hard and try to look unthreatening. “Okay, look, don’t call Dad on me,” he says, raising his hands. “He did mean—we did mean that, we’re helping now. So just tell me why you think this place has issues and I’ll deal with it and you can go home.”

Peter continues digging in his trouser-pocket for another second. “Stiles, _you’re_ the issue I want to report,” he mutters. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I…okay, I did break in, admittedly. But I’m not…I wasn’t looking for you. You were here first, so obviously you weren’t looking for me either,” Stiles says, watching the other man’s brow crease. He smells the irritation on Peter cresting before Peter abruptly yanks out an empty hand and stares resentfully at the bag. Which is closer to Stiles than to him, and which presumably has his phone in it. “And you’re spraying vervain around, so apparently, we’ve got a snake problem?”

“Snakes?” Peter says, looking around in alarm. But he catches himself pretty quickly and goes back to glaring at Stiles; he’s missing that tinge of sullenness that Derek has, making it come off as if he’s really trying to will Stiles to die and not as if he just hopes Stiles will. “What on earth do snakes have to do with anything? Did you find some other trap that Whittemore set up?”

“I feel like we’re having two completely different conversations here,” Stiles says after a moment. He puts the ID card away and then pushes a box over with his foot so that he can sit down on it, which also happens to move him a few more feet away from Peter’s bag. “Look, let’s start at the top. Three different magic-workers went over this room and I was the last one, so I know it’s curse-free. And I know you just said you think we’re totally incompetent, but we’re not.”

Peter snorts. He’s still got something wrong with his left side, and when he finally works up the courage to edge around the free space and come up to the other side of his bag, his free hand drifts towards his side a couple times. Stiff muscles, maybe—Stiles remembers what Laura had said about therapy and realizes she’d meant _physical_. Because yeah, Peter had had his shoulder messed up and had a rib cracked, and even though those should be healed now, there’d still be soft-tissue issues.

“I didn’t say that. You’re clearly very good at what you _do_ , I just think we disagree on what that is. Or perhaps it’s not a disagreement so much as a failure of admission,” he mutters. 

When he bends over, he does so very slowly, and ends up hooking the bag up to rest on a box before he finally caves and gingerly lowers himself to the floor so he doesn’t have to keep bending to dig in it. Still no internal-damage smell on him, so it has to be muscular. “If you’re implying I lack self-awareness, I’m more than happy to say we kind of didn’t care whether you died before, so that’s probably why we were a little more careless about it,” Stiles says, watching how Peter restrains himself from looking over at him. “And I’ll also say that now my dad’s dating your sister for real and not for fakesies, and I do care about Dad being happy, and he’d be really unhappy if I got your sister started on a vendetta against me. So I am trying to not mess you up these days.”

“Curiously, this is less than fully reassuring,” Peter says after a moment. He finally finds his phone, but instead of using it, just looks at it with a startlingly vicious bitterness, as if somehow this phone has ruined a major chunk of his life. Then, lips pressed tightly together, he sticks it in his pocket and reaches for the bag again. “I thought you said that the first round was just ensuring that the kanima residue was gone.”

“That was at the hospital,” Stiles says. “Yeah, I did, but the hospital’s different from here, it’s not actually like the kanima broke into this building so there’s a lot less…wait, are you spraying that stuff around because you think it…gets rid of evil or something?”

A red flush races up Peter’s throat and attempts to creep over his cheeks, but at that point he seems to check it by sheer irritation at Stiles. “You _said_ that a spell like that leaves a breach that other things can come through, and here you are, unscheduled,” he says. “How do you explain that?”

“Well, because that’s not how magic works, and yeah, I said that about the morgue but that was the _morgue_. Major shit went down there. Nothing went here, the books were just stored but you didn’t even trigger them until we brought them over to your office. So if anywhere needs to—” Stiles blinks “—did you…spray that around your office too?”

For a second, Peter looks like he might actually throw the bag at Stiles. His fingers curl tightly around the zipper and the muscles in his arm tense up. And then he lets out a forced exhale, and pulls out the notebook and opens it over his knee. “What’s wrong with vervain?”

“I’m not sure I want to tell you,” Stiles says, staring at him. When Peter starts to snap at him, Stiles rolls his eyes and kicks back against the box. Though that makes Peter jump in place and then reach for his side again, and Stiles wasn’t actually trying to spook the man, and damn it, now Stiles is starting to feel guilty over how sore Peter just plain smells at this point. “Because I don’t know what you’re trying to do with it, and you don’t have to trust me to believe that the biggest supernatural disasters always have somebody who doesn’t really know what they’re doing at the bottom of it. I mean, look what happened with Scott’s dad and David Whittemore.”

“I actually think that pair is an example of the opposite,” Peter says, frowning. “If I understand correctly, Scott’s father wanted to fake his death by actually dying, while David wanted to pretend to give him that while actually giving him eternal suffering.”

“No, the point is they both wanted to get away with their grand plan, and they didn’t, did they? Whittemore got poisoned and Scott’s father got chopped by your sister,” Stiles points out.

Which Peter, no matter how much he clearly wants to, can’t argue with. So instead he stares at Stiles, eyes narrowed. Then his face suddenly clears up, at the same time that his pulse starts racing again. “Very well. I came to make sure that you did your work properly. This actually is somewhere that several of my colleagues visit regularly, and if they encountered anything supernatural, I don’t trust them to handle it with any thought about who they might damage than I do you.”

Stiles makes himself not take the bait. “Yeah, okay, so—vervain?”

The flush comes back onto Peter’s face, and this time it gets past the cheekbones into the hollows. He looks a lot less polished that way; suddenly the artfully tousled hair just looks messy, and the casual clothing like whatever he could get on with half his muscles locked up. “I have consulted authorities that state it’s an effective warding herb.”

“You’ve consulted an authority on sounding like somebody who plays a druid on TV, is what it sounds like,” Stiles can’t help sniping. “Vervain’s effective if you’re in the West Indies and you want to keep off the bugs and stomach snakes at the same time, I guess. It’s not doing anything here except making the place smell nice.”

“Well—” Peter is going to cite something, and then he takes a deep breath and realizes that’d just be proving he’s stupid “—you can smell this?”

“It’s okay,” Stiles says, shrugging. Then catches the flicker of interest in Peter’s eyes. “I mean, it’s pretty weak even to us, so it’s not offensive. So—”

“So if there’s no work to be done, then why are you here?” Peter pounces. He holds Stiles’ gaze for a second, then looks pointedly at Stiles’ bag. “With what appears to be a full load, and I have been informed that you graduated third in your class, so you can’t possibly need summer classes.”

Stiles shrugs. “Hey, for all you know, I might be getting a headstart on college. It’s not like being a werewolf pays your taxes, and Dad’s gonna want to retire some day.”

“Pay your—” Peter says, rearing up to spit out what Stiles can tell is going to be truly premium-grade sarcasm. 

And then he stops himself. He leans back, a little short of breath, and stares at Stiles through narrowed eyes. His pulse is all over the place, skipping to disco one second and then sludging along the next. But overall Stiles thinks it’s mostly nerves, just based on the way the smell of his sweat is starting to come through.

“Very well.” Peter shakes his head, then puts his notebook back into the bag and zips it up. When he catches Stiles trying to get a look into it, he briefly looks pleased with himself. But that goes away, replaced by a simmering irritation, and he gets the bag-strap over his shoulder and then eases himself up, still favoring one side. “Clearly, I should just leave all of this to the experts.”

He tosses the spray bottle at Stiles, who snags it out of the air without really thinking about it. Peter twitches violently in surprise, his head going around as if Stiles had just pulled something from hammerspace instead of reacting to something _he_ did, and since he’s trying to walk at the same time, he ends up running into another box.

Stiles could have given the guy a hand, but he doesn’t, since what Peter wants is clearly for him to stand far away and watch. “So if you’re going to flip every time I move, we’re gonna have to work out a timetable for you to visit the station. It’s not like I’m even going outside of human range right now.”

“I thought your father had that place locked up,” Peter half-mutters, half-hisses. He’s stopped and caught himself against a waist-height tower of boxes, and since he doesn’t want to bend down, he’s pressing his clipped ankle against the bottom box. It doesn’t seem to be helping much. “He as good as told my sister that.”

“We do have it under control, it’s just sometimes you want to make it easier for everybody to stick to the same story,” Stiles says. “Which doesn’t include me being an Olympic-grade athlete, for the record.”

Which should be the kind of lead-in that immediately gets Peter’s interest, but aside from a sharp look, Peter just moves off the boxes and continues limping out of the room. Stiles follows him to the doorway and at that point, Peter turns around like he’s going to start it all up again. But, after an initial huff, he ultimately restrains himself and just gives the door a pointed look.

“Please do remember to push it all the way in when you leave,” he says. “It’s a bit sticky with the weather, and it does trip an alarm if it’s left open too long. It’d be easier if there weren’t constantly new records to expunge, too.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Stiles says.

Peter pauses and eyes him again. Then abruptly turns and leaves.

He really does. Door alarm records whatever, Stiles will fix that and so he stands there and tracks Peter’s footsteps even when the man’s completely out of view. They go all the way to the parking lot, no stops like he needs to trigger any hidden cameras (though maybe he’s got those on app control), and into his car and then, after just a couple of minutes, his car engine starts up. And he drives away. He actually leaves.

That is not…what Stiles thought would happen. Granted, he doesn’t _know_ know Peter, but he’d thought he’d gotten Peter’s weakness for omnipotent knowledge down and…the guy honestly would rather walk than figure out what Stiles is doing.

For some reason, even though it’s not why Stiles is doing it, the whole thing makes him feel weird about setting up a bunch of anti-possession wards on the entire storage building. He keeps stopping and looking at the charms he’s sealing into the drywall, and wondering if he’s doing something wrong. Which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Anyway, nobody else comes to disturb him, and even with the odd headspace, he finishes pretty quickly. He does have a thought as he packs up, and instead of going out the front, he cracks the keypad on another business’ offices and slips through that and out a side-door. Then makes a big loop around the building, ending in the parking lot of the café across the street from the building. 

Peter’s car isn’t there, and for a minute, Stiles is mad at the man and mad at himself, and _still_ doesn’t understand why. But then…he makes himself take a deep breath, and shoulders his back and just keeps on walking. So maybe he doesn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle that makes up Peter Hale. He does know that whatever Peter’s trying to do, the man still hasn’t figured out to do it, and he’s pretty sure he’ll figure it out first. He just needs a little more time. 

* * *

The Argents come over for dinner that night, armed with three boxes shipped down from wherever they’re keeping Gerard Argent’s stuff and a cooler of wild duck breasts, which they then proceed to turn into a delicious three-course meal, not counting dessert where everybody just goes with whatever cookie or ice cream or other sweet thing they can find in the kitchen.

“Mom was going to bring over some pie, but she’s been cooking nonstop for the barbecue and accidentally used up the crust she’d set aside,” Allison says, like she needs to apologize for this (she does need to for other things, but Stiles isn’t such a delusional asshole that he believes apologies have transitive properties). “And I think you said at some point that nobody here likes the taste of lime.”

Scott, because of course Scott’s gonna be in the kitchen even though his turn to wash the dishes was last night, frowns. “Did I? I don’t think we dislike it—Stiles loves Sour Patch Kids.”

“Yeah, it’s not a werewolf thing, if that was what you thought,” Stiles says, rubbing down a bowl. 

He racks it up in the dishwasher and then reaches for the next one, only to not get it because Melissa pokes her head into the room. “Barbecue?” she says. “You mean the one the hospital’s throwing?”

“Yeah, that one,” Allison promptly says. “It’s one of the biggest events in town during the summer, and pretty much everybody goes. Mom always volunteers to help with the desserts and Dad usually helps at the grill and…”

Then she stops, looking confused, as Stiles coughs and Scott just doesn’t cover up his attempted hiss at her. Melissa leans against the door, a very thin, very brittle-smelling layer of amusement covering obvious weariness, and eyes Scott and Stiles. “Boys?” she says. “Something the matter?”

“Um, no,” Scott says immediately. He bends over the dish he’s got, trying to dry it off with his sleeve, so he can’t see the hand-signals Stiles is trying to give him. “Just yeah, the barbecue. Um, Derek mentioned it too, and I was going to…they’re bringing drinks and asked if I wanted to help, so I just thought I would. I mean, I was going to go.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Melissa says, but she’s frowning. She steps into the kitchen, giving Allison a passing glance, and then reaches for the roll of paper towels on the counter. Once she’s torn off a piece, she sticks it under Scott’s bowed head. “That reminds me, I should give the hospital a call.”

Scott’s head immediately comes up, while behind him Allison grimaces and makes a sudden sideways move, like she’s going to go grab somebody. Neither Scott nor his mom pay any attention to her. “If you want, I can just take a message,” Scott says. “When I’m helping with the—”

“Baby, you’re not my messenger boy,” Melissa says, mouth twisted slightly too much to be just a wry smile. She shakes the towel and Scott takes it, shoulders set a little sheepishly. Then she stays there in front of him, the amusement draining out of her face and scent. “Honestly, maybe I should drop by the barbecue too. I should put in some face time.”

“Do you need to?” Allison blurts out. She flushes when they all look at her. “I mean…sorry, I just thought you were on leave while the police investigation was happening. Maybe I heard that wrong?”

“No, that was what we did. But I did leave pretty abruptly, and they’re trying to pick things up as best as they can, but there are still some loose ends I could tie up in five minutes,” Melissa says, shrugging. She steps back, one arm swinging across her front to tuck up under her breasts, glancing at Scott, who’s still looking unsure about this. “It’s just a professional courtesy to do that, and…I’m not doing a lot here.”

“You’re getting a vacation,” Scott says firmly. He and Melissa look at each other, and then he ducks his head as he turns around. His eyes widen slightly upon seeing Stiles and then he gives Stiles a quick, grateful smile as he hands over the dish. Then he turns back to his mom. “I mean, I think it’d be nice to go. There’s going to be a ton of food, and Derek says the bank’s renting these frozen slushie machines this year and Allison’s mom does make really good pie. I just don’t think you have to.”

Melissa smiles at Scott. It’s small and way too sad for Stiles’ taste, considering the two of them actually seem to be agreeing with each other. “I know, baby.”

Scott presses his lips together. Stiles shakes the water off his hands and looks around the kitchen for some excuse, and his eyes land on the nearly-overflowing trash. “Hey, so, dinner was really good but also it basically wiped us out, so I think Scott and I should grab the trash and—”

“I just don’t want you to go because you’re worried about me,” Scott suddenly says. He still knows Stiles and Allison are there; his eyes flick sideways to Allison and Stiles automatically slides over to his other side, where he can see Stiles has her if anything gets dramatic. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen. I know it’s right in the hospital parking lot but it’s during the day and the whole town will be there, and—”

“Dad can totally hide some guns in the meat coolers. They’re huge, we could probably get a whole rifle in one,” Allison suddenly blurts out. She looks around at them, then flushes. “Or, okay, that’s…not the greatest idea, and I know you don’t really need them anyway, and…um, but you do use stuff for magic, right? We could hide that instead.”

They really have to train these people just out of the sheer fuck-it-upery potential, Stiles thinks, resisting the urge to slap his hand against his face. “Tasers,” he mutters. “Make Scott tell you people about tasers.”

Allison starts to turn towards him, but then Melissa clears her throat. And gives Stiles a look like _he’s_ the one suggesting they ensure mass mayhem and live-stream coverage. 

“I don’t think there’s going to be any trouble either,” she says pointedly, to which Stiles, despite the obvious lack of factual support for her position, is only ever going to nod enthusiastically. She looks at him for a second longer, then takes a deep breath and turns back to Scott. Her expression softens a lot, so that she almost looks as if she’s…afraid, or something like that. “I—I didn’t think of it like that, Scott. I just thought—the rumor mill’s probably going crazy, knowing the hospital, and it’s been a while since I even called anybody. But—look, baby, if this was because you were worried about me, you don’t have to just cover for me—”

“I’m going to be fine, Mom,” Scott says. His tone isn’t exactly sharp, but he is interrupting her, and from the way he straightens up, it’s not because he’s in a panic. He looks like he really hates this but also like he thinks there’s no other way, and for a second Stiles thinks seriously about just setting something on fire to stop this conversation. But like he knows (he probably does, it’s Scott), he steps back and shuts the dishwasher and then pulls the bag out of the trashcan out to start tying it off. “I know graduation ended up a little rough, but I don’t think the barbecue’s going to be the same. And even if it is, Derek and Allison are both going to be there and one of them can drive me home.”

“I’ll go too,” Stiles says.

Scott glances back, blinking with genuine surprise because of course he’d never ask, and then he just gives Stiles a grateful nod. “Anyway, I have to get over it,” he says to his mom. “Dad was—around here, I have to get used to that.”

“They always really dress things up for the barbecue with balloons and streamers and stuff like that, so honestly it doesn’t look like the same place,” Allison says hurriedly. She keeps twitching forward like she’d like to reach out to Scott, but has enough sense to not just make it about her. “And yeah, I can drive him. Or Derek. And since we’re both helping out behind the scenes, if things get…um, overwhelming, I know there’s some space over where things get cooked that Scott can just sit—”

“It really was just the phrasing,” Stiles can’t help saying, because sure, it’s great that she wants to offer, but she’s making Scott sound like he’s just some fainting damsel. “That just happened to be his dad’s favorite saying, and it’s kind of a bullshit saying anyway, but figures a bitter asshole like Harris would—”

“I’m gonna be fine anyway,” Scott says, looking at Stiles. He’s not exactly mad but Stiles finds himself holding up his hands, and then Scott looks guilty, which makes Stiles feel like he kicked the guy in the balls. Scott presses his lips together again, then shakes his head and finishes knotting the top of the garbage bag. He looks up at Melissa. “Honestly, I want to go. It sounds fun. And…we used to go to that one block party, when we lived in L.A. You always seemed to really enjoy it, and catching up with everyone.”

“I did. The food wasn’t that great, to be honest, but it was nice to see people from when I was growing up,” his mother says after a long, not-quite-tension-free pause. She smiles a little, nostalgic, but smells more of sadness. “Some of them only came back just for that party—the ones who’d made it out. Though I guess we’re those people now…well, all right. I guess we’ll both see how it goes.”

Scott cocks his head and Stiles can tell he’s not sure how to take that. When things are like that, he usually wants to keep pushing and make sure everyone’s okay—something Stiles loves about him while also acknowledging it can literally drive people to attempted murder—and Stiles decides he probably just needs to throw in the towel and call for his dad. Whatever the hell the elder Argents are keeping him busy with, it can’t be as likely to go south as this.

But Scott just nods and says, “Okay. Sounds good.”

Which is very not him. Melissa studies him for a second, then unwraps her arm from around herself and reaches out. She gives Scott a hug, rubbing her cheek against his hair, and then pats his shoulder as she lets him go. “All right, baby. We’ll see.”

That is not Melissa either, and so Stiles doesn’t think he can be blamed for not realizing what’s really going on right up until he’s half-dragged out into the doorway leading to the garage. “What?”

“Well, now I need to come up with something for the barbecue,” Melissa says, pulling him along. She’s got her phone out in her other hand, and is flicking through recipes on it. “There is no way you haven’t been poking around this, so what else is already on the menu?”

“But—but trash!” is all Stiles can come up with.

“I’ve got it!” Scott calls, from where he’s still in the kitchen. “It’s okay, Allison’s helping!”

“If the Hales are bringing the drinks and Victoria has dessert—I was never really good at baking anyway, so that’s fine,” Melissa is muttering. “Meat…maybe. Are the police going? Is that just going to make Jordan snicker all day?”

Stiles finally gets his feet under himself, just as they walk into the garage. He gets loose from her, but she just walks around him and gets into his dad’s non-cop car so he has no choice but to claim shotgun. “Yeah, I think most of them are. Dad was going to put in an appearance, but—so we’ve got it covered from all angles. And the gossip thing’s something I’m working on.”

“I figured,” Melissa says. She puts her phone away and then turns to him as she takes out her car keys. “Stiles, I need you to stop that.”

“What?” Stiles says.

Melissa turns on the ignition and then punches the button to raise the garage door. She reaches for the wheel like she’s just going to drive out of there without any further comment—Stiles relaxes, since that’s more like her and he’s got a couple days to the barbecue to figure out an alternative—and then she suddenly drops her arms. She stares at the wheel, then heaves out a sigh and rubs at her face, suddenly smelling of stress and worry and disgust.

“No, I’m fine,” she says, as Stiles is about to just write off the rental car and break a door to go get his dad. She takes another, slower breath, and then slowly raises her arms. She puts her hands on the wheel but her grip’s loose and they’re not going to immediately drive off. “I just…I was doing it again, wasn’t I?”

Stiles starts to answer, then realizes he truly has no idea what she means and keeps his mouth shut. He does slide his phone out of his pocket and start to text his dad.

“The whole…where I just grab a solution and haul the rest of you along with it,” Melissa adds after another deep breath. She sags a little, still not looking at him. “I told your dad I was going to work on that. I told him I _knew_ I had to work on that.”

“Do you…do you want me to get him?” Stiles asks, very carefully.

Melissa glances over at him like he’d pulled out an epipen of Nine Herbs on her, then makes an effort to relax herself. “No. No—” she closes her eyes “—no, look, you don’t…you don’t have to just…cover for me, you know. Any more than Scott does. You don’t owe me that, Stiles.”

“Yeah, but I’m not…” Stiles still half-thinks he should be getting his dad, and also maybe finding out what the hell they were doing in the preserve, but he might have to leave her to do that and he’s not sure that would be a good idea. She smells so…confused, and he’s not used to her like that. Through all the things that’d happened to them, Scott’s mom always could break it down into the goal they needed to get to, and to make sure they didn’t forget that. “I want to help you to help you, not because there’s some…vendetta or whatever we’re trying to avoid. I mean, Dad told you—my mom wasn’t your fault. He told you that, right?”

For a long second, Melissa’s silent. Then she turns towards him. He’d smelled the tears welling up but he’s still surprised at how bright they make her eyes look. “Yeah, he’s mentioned it. A lot,” she says, the wry smile back on her face. She lifts one hand and presses at her eye, then takes a gulping breath. “All right, look, I…I am going to this barbecue. And if I’m going, then I’m not going to let them call me a bad cook on top of whatever else they’re saying about me these days. You’re welcome to come, but you don’t have to.”

“Hey, I’ll come,” Stiles says. “I think all we were going to do tonight anyway was Dad was going to pull records on those names Allison’s dad had, and I can just get those from him later.”

Melissa—doesn’t flinch. She does the opposite, where she’s so natural about doing what she’s doing—backing the car out of the garage—that Stiles knows whatever it is, it’s really bugging her. He’d thought dinner had gone okay, given all the nervous flirting that had been happening that he had zero interest in, but…now that he thinks about it, near the end Melissa had been starting to get quiet. Right around when Allison’s mom had asked whether Melissa wanted them to bring over any more food, and Allison’s dad had followed up by mentioning she was welcome to come to their house and pick what she liked out of their deep freeze.

Stiles had been under the impression that things there were pretty much like with his dad and Talia Hale, in that whatever rationale they were using, the bottom line was Stiles had started putting out bottles of de-scenter around the house with big block-lettered labels because think of the other noses in the house, please, but…maybe it’s more like Scott where he keeps saying he and Derek and Allison are working something out, but then he keeps just talking to them.

Either way, Melissa seems to want to get out of the house, and Stiles doesn’t mind going along with her. So he shoots off a text to his dad, just to let him know where they’re going, and then starts working his network to figure out the food situation.

* * *

It’s not that surprising that the closest supermarket to the hospital is open till midnight, but given the size of the town, it is a little surprising how well-stocked it is. The counters in the meat and bakery department are all closed, but the produce is out and gleaming and the dairy section is stocked and the spice section is so diverse that Stiles ends up having to roll little pills of tissues and stuff them up his nose and breathe through his mouth in order to concentrate on reading recipe ingredients off for Melissa.

“Well, if you want to stay authentic, you can’t substitute the paprika, Hungarian’s got a totally different vibe from Spanish, but if you’re just aiming for delicious, I think we can rejigger the cumin percentages to get that smoked profile,” Stiles says, consulting his phone. “Or, okay, there’s always liquid smoke.”

Melissa has always been one hundred percent tougher than anybody else in the pack, and so she’s just grimacing and occasionally sniffling. “I thought this was a barbecue. The grill should already add the smoke flavor.”

“Yeah, you’d think, but if they’re going with your standard mass-produced briquettes and sloshing gallons of lighter fluid over it, then we’re faced with a choice between artificial smoke taste and artificial petrochemical taste,” Stiles reminds her. He watches her frown and poke at the spice bottles, and then yelps as one of the tissue pellets falls out of his nose.

“Maybe you should just go grab the citrus,” Melissa says, as he scoops it up from the floor. “I think I can smell your sinuses swelling. You know, now that we have time, we probably should sit you down and see whether that’s a sign of something.”

“It’s just a sign that, of all werewolves, of course I’m gonna be the one who manages to have the equivalent of allergies,” Stiles mutters, but he takes her point. He can’t help her if he’s busy draining buckets of snot out of his nose.

So he leaves her in that aisle and pushes their cart back over to the produce section. They’d been going to leave the citrus selection till after they’d figured out the spice profile they were going for, but honestly, aside from the sour oranges, all the other ones can be easily repurposed so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t just grab a pound of every type he’s ever seen Melissa use in cooking.

There’s also no reason why Peter Hale needs to be lingering over the organic-herbs case either, but hey, werewolves are real and twice a year Stiles puts himself through an all-purpose curse-removal ritual. Which, clearly, he’s overdue for.

“Well, hello,” Peter says flatly. He obviously didn’t plan this either, although he’s a bit too carefully-dressed for this to be a late-night emergency run. His hair is combed and his shoes are the same level of casual as the rest of this outfit. “I’d say it’s a pleasure, except I understand werewolf senses renders lying completely pointless.”

“You’re still wearing de-scenter,” Stiles points out.

Peter’s brows rise. “And here I was under the impression that hearing was the key sense when it comes to lie-detection. Disagreement between fellows or am I misinformed?”

Stiles is really not prepared for this, mentally or magically. He was still trying to work out exactly what’s going on with Melissa, and also, since he assumed nobody would be stupid enough to trail two alpha werewolves into a mostly-empty store at night, he left most of his tools in the car. And—for fuck’s sake, he tells himself. Peter Hale. He can do this in his sleep. “Oh, no, you can still lie to me,” he says, shrugging. He waits long enough for Peter to start to look uncertain. “It’s more like you lying is totally irrelevant, since based on what you’ve got in your cart, either you’re creating the mother of all green goddess dips, or you’re still playing around with supernatural repellant recipes. Which, in that case, can you just say that’s what you’re doing?”

“I believe I did,” Peter says dryly, though one of his hands goes out towards the cart handle. He pulls it back before it ever touches, but it’s still telling. He looks at Stiles for a second, and then redirects his gaze to Stiles’ cart. “And if we’re exchanging those kinds of stories, should I just guess that you’re doing something in the line of clearing the air? Those old tunnels do get musty, but I hope you’ll remember that our property lines aren’t surface-level only and we are looking into closing up the openings on our grounds.”

“We’re making mojo marinade for that giant barbecue the hospital is throwing,” Stiles says blankly. He looks in his cart, then back at Peter, who seems torn between disbelieving Stiles and disbelieving the general situation. Then he looks in his cart again. “Anyway, why would I be in the tunnels on your property? Did you dig up something? I thought Dad and I both told you that you’ve got to let the cleansing rituals do their thing in order for—oh, wait, were you…like you thought I was making pomanders? Like those orange and clove balls?”

Peter doesn’t really want to answer. He fiddles with the bunch of herbs in his hand, then almost puts it back in the case. Then, every bit of him vibing with annoyance, he turns around and pulls a bag off the plastic roll and starts to try to stuff the herbs into it. “Possibly.”

“Because…oh, I follow now, clearing the air, pestilence demons—I mean, those haven’t really been a problem since a druid got into the CDC during the Spanish flu epidemic, but pomander balls would work for that and why do you know that?” Stiles says, realizing mid-stream that that is not only relatively advanced charmwork, but also really digging into the history of magic. Pomanders are old-fashioned, unflashy stuff that were a dead end as far as magic development goes, so it’s not knowledge that routinely gets taught. “How do you know that?”

And there goes the smug, lighting up Peter as if somebody buffed that handsome face with bronzer. “I have my resources, Stiles,” he says, still absently rustling the bag. “The supernatural’s a new area, but it’s hardly exclusive to you.”

“No, it’s not, but I’ve been living it my whole life and watching people stumble into it,” Stiles says, narrowing his eyes. “You know what the average lifespan is between discovery and when they think they get it, and accidentally sic a chupacabra on their annoying neighbor’s toddler?”

Peter stops with the herbs. “I’m sure you’re very concerned about my well-being,” he snaps.

“I’m just—ugh, look, just tell me which parts of Whittemore’s library you’re pulling from before somebody gets replaced with a changeling and I’ll tell you whether that edition had massive typos in it or not,” Stiles says, deciding he’s not really in the mood for the sarcasm battles. It’s late, he needs to get back to Melissa, and honestly, if Peter goes off and gets himself killed, at least this time Stiles will know it’s got nothing to do with his pack. “Also, that’s the wrong end of the bag, that’s why it’s not opening up for you.”

“What?” Peter says.

He looks down at the plastic bag dangling from his fingers, and at the same time, Stiles turns his cart around and pushes it in the opposite direction. 

Of course, Peter notices, and calls after him so Stiles doesn’t go straight back to Melissa. Instead he detours into the meat section, whistling to himself so that she’ll hear, and then gets honestly distracted by the big, long undercase of house-prepared marinades that sits in front of and just below the main glass case for the meats. There’s at least ten different varieties and just from smell alone, he can tell they’re going to be delicious.

“Are you…you’re actually shopping for food.” Peter’s caught up.

“Well, yeah, we eat,” Stiles says. For a second, he thinks about running, and—no, Melissa is going to want to finish the shopping later if they leave now, so he might as well just stall so she can finish up. Although…he squats down and sniffs around till he finds the most tasty-smelling marinade, and then picks out the plastic container so he can read the ingredients list. Melissa probably still wants to do something by hand, but it doesn’t hurt to get ideas. “That barbecue’s open to everybody so long as you contribute something, and we do have very sensitive tastebuds.”

“I distinctly remember seeing you eating an entire bag of Cheetos with Cholula sauce,” Peter says after a second. “And I don’t believe you were doing it because you were being forced to, or because you were trying to create a distraction. As far as I could tell, you were actually enjoying it.”

Stiles looks up. Yeah, Peter’s being snarky, but also, under that, he is genuinely confused. And genuinely interested in not being confused. “I remember that bag too, and for the record, Cora swaps in Fritos but she does that too.”

“I can’t be held responsible for my niece’s tastebuds, I didn’t contribute to that gene pool,” Peter mutters. Then starts sharply when Stiles laughs.

They stare at each other for a few seconds. Peter keeps pressing his lips together, as if he’s thinking about telling Stiles something—probably telling him off again—and then keeps deciding to not do it. But for some reason, he doesn’t just walk off.

“I was serious about Whittemore’s books,” Stiles says after a little bit more of this. Not entirely sure why, since he still doesn’t really want to have this conversation. Maybe out of sheer wanting to have it on the record, when things blow up, that he did in fact warn people. “Not all of them were top-quality, and you can really mess things up if you haven’t learned enough to spot the parts that aren’t right. Including collateral damage, if you want to talk about that.”

“Well, if it puts your mind at ease, I have _not_ been using those,” Peter says. He sounds hostile as usual, but there’s an odd drag to his words, dulling their edge. “In fact, I was more than happy to get them to you and out of sight, and if I have my way, I will never be remotely in the same space as them again.”

If he’s been in the house Stiles and his dad are renting, he has been, but—Stiles pulls back from pointing that out at the last minute. “They are actually decent references,” he says instead. “Just—”

“With typos, as you said.” Peter still is oddly subdued, something distracting him from his irritation. He inhales, pauses, and then starts to ask Stiles something, only to abruptly turn around as a cart squeaks towards them. “Oh. You found the salt.”

“So much salt,” Laura Hale agrees, huffing a little as she wheels over a cart that’s piled full of what looks like every single box of salt the store has. She slows as she sees Stiles, then gives Peter a glance that he returns with a raised brow. Her face twitches, and then she rolls back her shoulders and crosses the rest of the way over. “Are you sure we can’t just order this on Amazon, if we’re going to do this much? It’s like two dollars a pound less, at least.”

At the same time, Stiles hears Melissa coming over. She knows she’s coming up on them; she staggers her footsteps briefly as a signal, then continues towards them. Her stride sounds casual and unhurried but Stiles knows better than that, and snaps a quick photo of the marinade label before he puts it back and stands up.

“Okay, look, I know you think I’m just trying to set up more boobytraps for you, even though I didn’t set up the one with Scott’s dad in the first place, but why are you buying kosher?” Stiles sighs, going over to the cart. He lifts out one box, looks at it, and then drops it back in the cart. “Salt’s salt. You totally don’t need to use food-grade, much less gourmet. It’s not like the undead is going to praise you for your choices here.”

Laura and Peter both stare at him. Then, reaching into the cart to slightly adjust the box Stiles just dropped, Peter clears his throat. “This isn’t for me,” he says. “This is for the barbecue. We’re setting up a homemade Gatorade bar as part of the nutritional-education area.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, blinking. “That…actually, that’s kind of cool.”

“Undead?” Laura says sharply, jerking herself forward. She looks between Stiles and Peter, and then back at Stiles. “What are you doing here anyway? Are you stalking us again?”

“He wasn’t stalking you to begin with,” Melissa says, before Stiles can. She strolls up, cradling an armful of spice bottles, and begins to nestle them into Stiles’ cart. Then she pauses and looks at Stiles, who shrugs and mimes drinking; sighing, she pushes aside a bag of limes and resumes with the spices. “And we’re just shopping for the barbecue ourselves.”

“Oh, so you’re going,” Laura says, not exactly a question. Not exactly happy or startled either. She folds her arms over her chest, ignoring Peter when he coughs and tries to get her attention. “Also, he might not have been stalking me, but he was stalking Peter, and Derek and Cora a little. I come from a family of hair-splitters, so don’t start trying that on me now.”

Melissa pauses. Then straightens up, one hand still on the side of the cart. “Laura, it’s late, and it honestly looks like we both were just trying to pick up a few things,” she says. “Do you really want to do this now?”

“Well, when exactly were we going to do this?” Laura shoots back, as Peter sighs and half-turns away from her. “When you came back to work? Were we going to schedule an appointment or something, so you could tell me I’m overreacting about how you deliberately suckered me into being friends with you just so you could use my family?”

“I thought we’d get coffee. Probably somewhere on the other side of town, since I don’t think any of the ones near the hospital count as neutral ground anymore, between us or because of what else I was doing,” Melissa says after a moment. She’s still calm—unnaturally so, and usually with her, that means she’s about to lay a serious beatdown on somebody. But that’s not what her stance says.

Laura’s stance, on the other hand, is practically on the verge of making her fall into the cart of salt. She’s almost on her toes and so upset that she’s vibrating in place; Peter actually reaches for her at one point, and she jerks her arm away so hard that she has to take a step to get her balance back. “Oh, that’s very sweet of you,” she says. “Thank you _so_ much for thinking of me.”

Melissa exhales, and for the first time, shows a little frustration. “No, I wasn’t really your friend,” she says. Pauses, looking levelly at Laura, who doesn’t seem to have anticipated this approach. “It was for other reasons. I wasn’t just asking about your family because I was interested in you.”

“I think we’ve established that. Laura, I don’t see any reason why—” Peter says.

“Did you like me at all?” Laura asks abruptly. She squeezes her hands against her hips, and briefly looks away from Melissa to their respective carts. Then back at Melissa, her chin rising slightly. “Look, I get that’s super-narcissistic to ask, but I’m not here for a lecture. I just want to know, whatever you were doing it for—were you laughing at me behind my back? Did you just think it was a bunch of bullshit you had to fake your way through to get to my mom, or Peter, or…”

“So, I got all the fruits, and if it’s too much, we can always look into punch,” Stiles says cheerfully. “I mean, punch for us, not punch for the town, ‘cause honestly, you can’t always be a giver and—”

“It’s fine, Stiles,” Melissa says without looking at him, though she does put her hand out on a bag on lemons. “I wasn’t always laughing. Because yeah, I did a couple of times—you have some ridiculous ideas of what people who don’t live in Beacon Hills think, I’ll be honest with you.”

Laura stares at her, mouth hanging about an inch open. Then closes that mouth sharply enough for the teeth-click to be audible even to non-werewolves; Peter, standing next to her, startles. Then inhales and tries to take Laura by the arm. “Get off, Peter, if she kills me, you can blame me when Mom asks,” Laura says irritably. Then turns back to Melissa. “Like what?”

“Like—like this whole idea you have that they’re going to not care about where you come from or who your family is,” Melissa says after a second. “I guess if you don’t want to be friends so they never get to know you. But the thing is, I think you _do_ want friends, and if so, they’re going to ask questions and look you up on the Internet, and it’s not just people here who are going to look funny at you. Even in L.A., they’d think your mom posts way too many photos of her brother on Facebook.”

“They’re all about his career!” Laura says, over Peter’s belated objection. “Most of them are his anyway, he threatens to break your phone if you take a candid and don’t at least drop a filter over it. And God forbid you choose Lo-Fi because that apparently brings out his pores.”

“Really?” Stiles says. “Mostly I was checking the shiny forehead.”

Peter death-glares him, which gives Melissa time to shrug. “Okay, so that right there—”

“Look, it’s fair to make fun of Peter’s filter obsessions,” Laura says, so now Peter’s death-glaring her. “I get that kind of stuff is weird. But—just having him helping raise us, because our dad was a fucking…well, what the hell do they know?”

“Well, I hate to tell you, but people judge the hell out of other people no matter where you go,” Melissa says with a sigh. She absently rolls her palm over the lemons. “You’re still going to have to have a cover story, Laura. It might take a little longer for it to come up if you move away, but it’ll still need to…what are you looking for, anyway? People to know the truth, or people to care about you? Because you don’t have to have both at the same time.”

Laura looks incredulous. “Really? Because that’s worked out _so_ well for you, with keeping things even from your—” she waves her hand at Stiles “—so I guess we know which you care more about, truth or caring. Though they seemed pretty pissed off when the truth came out.”

“Okay, let’s just—we’re gonna go,” Stiles says, reaching for the cart. His eyeline happens to cross Peter’s—the other man is pushing at Laura’s back, like he might just topple her on top of the salt if necessary—and then they both freeze because they seem to be on the same page.

“I didn’t say that,” Melissa says sharply. She takes her hand out of the cart as Stiles moves it, actually stepping closer to the Hales. Then stops as they both jerk back. A muted but distinct tinge of regret makes it into her scent, and then she takes a deep breath and moves back towards Stiles. “I never said I was right about everything, Laura. And I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, including what’s more important in life, and…anyway, you asked what I thought about you. I think you really want to know whether I thought about you at all, and I did. We’re not monsters, whatever you think. We’re were—we’re wired to live in groups, even more than regular people, and we pay a lot of attention to how people think of us to protect ourselves, and with all of that, it’s not easy to pretend other people are just tools. I just made myself do it, because I thought I had to. All right?”

It’s not all right, says Laura’s expression, but in a way that she’s clearly chewing on rather than thinking up the next outburst. She wraps her arms back around herself, staring at Melissa as Melissa grabs the back end of the cart and helps Stiles reverse the wheels—which would go wonky right now—so they can turn it without knocking over a bunch of boxed shrimp cocktail. Peter’s muttering to her about going home and talking to her mother, but she still seems to be ignoring him.

“I think you should come to the barbecue,” Laura suddenly says. Stiff about it, and pulling her shoulders in like she thinks somebody’s going to come at her. Maybe Peter, who’s looking at her as if she’s insane. “I mean, stay a while, don’t just do a drive-by, if that was what you were going to do. I know you’re kind of over what the rest of the hospital thinks of you—or at least, that’s what you said to me, I don’t know if that was part of the act too. But I do know this town, and if you don’t at least come say hi, they’re just going to write you off. Everybody here’s so big on just checking certain boxes—as long as Mom and us show up to that and the winter holiday fair, they’re at least not going to snub us to our faces.”

“We were just going to send some food,” Melissa says, slowing down and looking over. “But Scott’s going—your family offered to take him, apparently.”

“Derek,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. “Does not have the authority to speak for all of us, but I suppose in the interest of our truce—”

“Oh, leave Derek alone. He at least said he’d just take Scott and Allison separately if it was a big deal, and anyway, look—” Laura turns back to Melissa “—if you come, I wasn’t planning to make a scene.”

“Well, thanks,” Melissa says after a moment. She leaves her mouth open as if to say more, but ultimately doesn’t.

Laura shrugs. “Okay. So. You’ll do a drive-by, then?”

“I…we’ll see,” Melissa says, looking uncertain in a way she rarely shows to outsiders. “It’s been…a lot lately. But you’re probably right about the gossips. And we’re not leaving any time soon.”

“Okay, well, if you come for longer, we do the drinks—Derek probably told Scott that,” Laura says, and now she’s the one going all disjointed. She brushes her hair back from her face. “I’m going to be doing the homemade Gatorade tutorial. I—if you’re trying to avoid us, or…find us…”

“I guess we’ll see. That okay?” Melissa says.

“Yeah. I guess—yeah,” Laura says. Tightly, and a couple times as Stiles and Melissa walk away, she starts to say more. 

But never totally gets it out, and by then Peter’s hissing pretty pointedly at her about promising things and their own reputation and other stuff that Laura can’t just turn a shoulder to. By the time Stiles and Melissa turn into the nearest aisle, Laura’s stopped paying any attention to them and is hissing back at Peter.

“Well, stuff you wish the full moon didn’t bring out in people,” Stiles mutters.

Melissa looks oddly at him. “I thought it was waning—am I really going that crazy now that I forgot—”

“What? No, no, you’re right, I just—I don’t know, I’m starting to think the Hales have their own bizarre psycho-gravitational pull, like no matter what we do, everything always circles back to their drama well,” Stiles says, sighing. For good measure, he pulls his phone out and switches to the lunar phase widget to show her, and then puts it away. “I’m just making stuff up, okay? I’m tired, I can’t figure out if Peter’s just looking for a Magic 101 kit or if he’s trying to poison us, and I’m rambling.”

Nodding, Melissa lets them get to the lone checkout line. She even handles the chitchat with the slightly stupefied clerk—weed, plus some wine cooler, says Stiles’ nose—explaining the fruit away as some family-secret recipe for agua fresca. And then, once they’re out in the parking lot and fully loaded up and she’s even let Stiles take the wheel, she nails him.

“So what’s with you and Peter?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Stiles says. He nearly misses a stop sign—Melissa’s snort is what catches his attention and makes him look over at her side and see it—and then he pushes back on the wheel with the heels of his hands and takes a deep breath. “Okay. So he’s annoying, and teaching himself magic or something like that, and I’m keeping an eye on it, _but_ for the record, I am not stalking him. I’ve actually been deliberately trying to go to places where I _don’t_ think he’s going to be, so I can check on things, except he keeps popping up. And even then, I am not looking into why he’s stalking _me_.”

They go a couple blocks. “I don’t think he’s stalking you, Stiles,” Melissa says. She’s looking at the side of his face, he can sense it, like her gaze is lasering away his carefully-constructed expression layer by layer. “I think he is interested in what you’re doing, but…what have you been doing? Scott said you’d been over to the morgue again.”

“Well, like I said, I’ve been checking on things,” Stiles mutters. He twists his hands against the wheel, and when they get to the next stop, he caves and looks over at her. “I’m just cleaning up things, you know, where Blackwood messed around and where Whittemore might have anchored spells and stuff. Nothing major, just…checking.”

“I know, and you know I’m just as paranoid as you about druids so I’m not going to point out that Alan and Marin wouldn’t have left town if they’d thought anything concerning to _them_ —” Melissa stresses the word till Stiles sighs and nods in acknowledgement “—was still in place.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “You literally just pointed out that, the relevant qualifier, and that you’re at least two retorts ahead of me in this conversation.”

“Well, because I might not have all of my life back together at this point, but I think I’ve dug out of it enough to notice you’re still acting like we have something to fight,” Melissa says.

“I’m not—we’re werewolves! We’re persecuted, and not as in millennial victimhood fetishizing but as in we literally have entire families who’ve dedicated themselves to eliminating our entire population from the face of the earth!” Stiles says. Then grimaces and puts his foot on the gas, just now noticing that the light’s gone from red to green to yellow. He makes it through the intersection and then slows back down, just as they pass a cop car half-hidden in the bushes on the other side. The cops flash their high-beams in greeting and Stiles scrunches further down in his seat, already hearing his dad’s voice in his head. “I’m just—”

“It’s not even a week out from your graduation, Stiles. I know we’ve still got problems, but you’re the only person in this pack who hasn’t just sat down and tried to…tried to just do something you enjoy,” Melissa says, sighing and putting one elbow up to rest on the car door. She leans her head against her hand and side-eyes him. “And don’t start going on about how you really enjoy rooting out conspiracies against us. For one, you need at least two people for it to qualify as a conspiracy, and I don’t see the rest of Peter’s family helping him out.”

Stiles opens his mouth.

“Including him in their rants at you doesn’t count. That just means they’ve got their own bone to pick with you,” Melissa says.

“Not what really happened,” Stiles says, but he’s muttering it. He doesn’t really want to bring up how he ended up at the morgue in the first place, since that’ll just undercut his claim (which is still valid _after_ that point) of no stalking on his side. “Okay, I get it. I’m being overachieving again. But I wasn’t—I’m not looking for a fight, I just want you to know. I know we’re trying to have some downtime and believe me, I am more than on board with that.”

“You just want to make sure the rest of us get to rest,” Melissa says. When he glances over, she’s smiling affectionately at him and it suddenly strikes him that he hasn’t seen her look that relaxed in a long time. He looks away quickly, and she sighs and he knows she’s not smiling like that anymore. She doesn’t go on for a few seconds. “I wasn’t great—look, honestly, I pretty much lost my mind over the last few weeks. I know. I’m sorry I put you and your dad through that, and I’m sorry you both have had to pick up the slack. But Stiles…it’s okay if you tell me I need to take that back. It’s okay if you want a day off, and if you tell me I need to make it so you can have one.”

He’s actually fine, Stiles wants to tell her. With school done, he’s got huge chunks of time where he doesn’t have to constantly balance their cover stories with acting ‘normal’ with keeping an eye out for any bizarre warning signs, and there’s not really a ton else to do. It’s not like his social calendar is full, and all the people he knows are pretty much looking into what he’s looking into, and he honestly doesn’t mind. It’s not even like this is so boring he has to force himself to pay attention; he finds this stuff interesting anyway.

But that’s not going to play with her, says the steady way she keeps looking at him. She wants him to just chill out, and given what she’s had to go through lately, he supposes he can at least try until she’s not looking. “Okay. Got it.”

“Good,” she says.

And then that’s it till they drive up to the house. The Argent car is still in the driveway, and as Stiles slides by it into the garage, he sees Melissa tensing up. Soon as they’re parked, he takes the keys and hurries up ahead to the door to run interference—he’d normally stay back to help her with the groceries—only to have his dad meet him right inside.

“You’re grounded, kid,” his dad says, taking the keys from his hand.

“I—what—I graduated!” Stiles says.

“Yeah, and Tara says you ran a red light on the way back,” his dad says. “High school diploma just means you don’t get juvy anymore.”

Stiles glares at his father, who shrugs and ruffles his hair, and then Melissa comes in the house at the same time that Chris Argent appears behind Stiles’ dad. 

“Oh, you…shopped?” Chris says, looking at the bags of fruit in Melissa’s hands. He starts to reach out, and then abruptly pulls in his arms. “Okay. We were wondering.”

“It looks like Gerard might’ve had some dealings with that one asshole cousin of Claudia’s,” Stiles’ dad explains. His pulse hasn’t really ticked up, but he is watching Melissa and Chris closely. “We were trying to match it up and lost track of time, and figured they might as well stay over.”

“If this is your way of telling me I’m doing laundry two days in a row, you could just note it on the fridge,” Melissa says dryly. She and Stiles’ dad snort at each other, and then she slows down as she takes another step inside. She can’t go any further with Chris in the way, and he seems to realize that too and starts to back up, but then Melissa holds out a bag of sour oranges. “Here, grab this? I still have another two in the car.”

“Oh, sure,” Chris says. He’s kind of suspiciously happy about it, and then ends up ducking his head and totally artificially grumping up his expression as Stiles and his dad look on. Then he and Melissa both go in separate directions, which is a way less obvious way to handle it.

Stiles’ dad exhales, rubbing his hand over his mouth, in what is slightly too amused to be a sigh. Then he looks at Stiles. “Good trip?”

“Well, we got barbecue stuff sorted out, I think,” Stiles says. “Then again, I’m grounded.”

“You’re not grounded from community service,” his dad says, and then grins at Stiles hits his shoulder. “Okay, well…seriously, son, I think you can stay in tonight. It sounds like it’s pretty calm out.”

“I don’t know why everybody suddenly thinks I’m the one most likely to,” Stiles says, and then cuts himself off as he hears Melissa coming towards the door again. He glances that way, then back at his dad and just glimpses the worried expression that is sliding off his dad’s face. And…fine. He can manage this. “All you’re saying is I literally need to catch up on my World of Warcraft raids, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I think the world can live with that,” his dad says. He reaches out and takes Stiles by the shoulder, tugging him down the hall till they’re in sight of the staircase to the second floor, and then he gives Stiles a push. “Go to bed, Stiles.”

“’night, Dad,” Stiles says, flapping his hand over his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I understand there's another CW supernatural show that's incorporated vervain into its mythology, and I'm not referencing that. Vervain's an alleged anti-snakebite charm in American folklore. Also, vervain doesn't really have much of a smell.
> 
> So those oranges studded with cloves, they're not just a cute craft for the kids. Way back in the medieval ages, when people believed that disease was called by "foul air" or demons, they were used as a magical charm against those things.


	4. Chapter 4

Breakfast the next day is interesting, mostly because in the middle of it, Cora Hale knocks on the front door. “I came by because Ally said they were all over here, and why are you breathing like that?”

Stiles blinks, then remembers he’s mouth-breathing and switches to his nose. There’s enough of a breeze out here that he’s not getting anything from the upstairs he can’t ignore. “Why don’t you ask your de-scenter-stealing uncle why?”

Cora looks at him for a few seconds, and then rolls her eyes and sticks her leg across the threshold, elbowing him out of the way. He’s thrown enough to let her, and when he finally catches up and curls his lip to show a fang, she digs in her pocket and then comes up with…a mountain ash stick.

“Hey!” Stiles says, as an invisible force field pointedly whaps his nose. “Watch where you stick that!”

“Oh, huh, it does work,” Cora says, looking at the stick. Then she keeps holding it in Stiles’ face. “Ally! Allison! You in?”

“Cora?” Allison says, coming out of the kitchen. “What’s the matter?”

“She’s threatening me in my own house, that’s what,” Stiles snaps. He backs up and pulls off his shirt, and then, when the two women look at him, he uses the looped-up shirt to snag the stick out of Cora’s hand and sling it into the next room. “And I know for a fact that we were all home last night so whatever happened to your brother is _not_ our fault.”

Scott stumbles into view behind Allison. “What happened? Is Derek okay? Do we need to go?”

“He’s fine, God. Call him if you don’t believe me,” Cora says, like this is an unreasonable conclusion to draw from her behavior to date. She gives Stiles a glare and then turns back to Allison. “But _you_ haven’t been answering me.”

“Cora, we were honestly just finishing up breakfast,” Allison says, and to her credit, she seems annoyed with her too. “And look, Stiles is right, this is actually his house, and unless something really bad happened, you really shouldn’t just come—pointing—whatever that was at him. I’m fine, we just stayed over because Mom and Dad wanted to talk to Scott’s mom and Stiles’ dad about something and—”

“Mom wanted me to tell you that some guy called the bank, pretending he’s with the bank up in Washington that’s still holding your grandfather’s assets,” Cora says. “She got them to cut it off, but your parents probably should go in and confirm that wasn’t something they okayed.”

Allison stops. Scott looks at her and she glances at him, then turns around, biting her lip. Then she mutters to wait a second so she can go get her parents, and she goes off, followed by Scott.

“You’re mouth-breathing again,” Cora says.

Stiles looks at her. It is kind of impressive that she’s not afraid of him, he supposes. Except for the fact that he is still extremely annoyed, and now he can’t even freak her out to get back at her, and…he doesn’t feel guilty about a pretty big chunk of what they did pre-Hales finding out, and that is probably not a well-adjusted person thing to feel but so what.

She doesn’t move. He listens to Allison finding and talking to all of the parents, and his dad sighing and saying he’ll call Jordan—who did not stay over—for good measure. Then he puts his shirt back in and goes into the other room. He hunts up her stupid stick, which has little bits of wire strung with what appear to be decorative glass and metal bits wrapped around it, and borrows a macassar off an armchair to scoop it up and bring it back to her.

“This looks like you got it off Etsy,” he has to tell her.

“Because I did. Wizard wands are the first thing that come up when you google it,” Cora says, looking annoyed. She takes the wand back and sticks it under her arm. “So mountain ash really works.”

“Okay, listen, if you and your family just want a werewolf 101 primer, let’s just fucking set up lunch or dinner and go over it,” Stiles snaps. “It’ll save us all a lot of time and then my dad doesn’t have to worry about you idiots going off and DIY-magicking up some genocidal jackass, and we don’t have to pretend to be friends either. How about that?”

That’s kind of an asshole thing to do, is how Cora feels about it. She shifts back a little, wrinkling her nose, and then her gaze suddenly sharpens. “Listen, I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, but I don’t think it’s Derek or me because neither of us have really bothered you since the whole golf course thing,” she says. “Which is because even before you tried to get us killed, you were kind of a dick.”

“I wasn’t really looking to get an invite to your grad bash either,” Stiles mutters. “Fine. How about you just go wait for Allison on the front porch? Because, for the record, she’s here of her own free will, and we’re not trying to kill her.”

“I know she’s here because of Scott,” Cora says, frowning. “You’re being weird, even for you.”

“Because you know me well enough to have a standard of comparison,” Stiles says.

Cora rolls her eyes and half-turns like she’s going to leave, which suits Stiles just fine. But then she stops. She thinks about something, which she’s not thrilled about but which makes her turn back before Stiles can start edging the front door shut with his foot. “Look. I’m not expecting a ‘sorry’ or anything, but—”

“For what, trying to save my best friend? Who wasn’t and isn’t you?” Stiles says.

“You know what, Stiles? I actually don’t really care about that,” Cora says, stomping back into his face. “I get that part of it. Ally’s my friend and a lot of people think that’s weird as hell, given the family feud we used to have, but she’s been there for me through a lot and if I was gonna prioritize? I’d fuck up some people over fucking her up, too. But this thing where you think I’m gonna _let down my guard_ and _chill_ around you just because Mom and your dad now say we’re all on the same page…if you didn’t give a shit about me before, why would you now?”

“Well, fine, that’s a fair point,” Stiles has to admit. “But do you have to be so—”

“Bitchy about it? So sorry, didn’t realize I was also supposed to get over my trauma over almost getting mauled to death and _not_ take it out on you. Because again, still don’t like you,” Cora says. She takes the wand out from under her arm, gives it a half-hearted twirl, and then looks up to catch him watching it closely. “This isn’t about being sadistic, just so you know. If I felt like that, I wouldn’t be going with this frou-frou thing just because it’s what I could get with overnight shipping. It’s just—I need to know when it comes up again, because you are staying in town, I don’t have to just listen to you about what to do and take whatever you feel like telling me.”

“Okay,” Stiles exhales. When the wand twitches, he puts his hands up. Tries not to roll his eyes too hard and it’s convincing enough that she finally puts the stupid thing back in her pocket. “Fine. And I get I’m never going to be your friendly neighborhood werewolf, and I’m fine with that if we’re just—just clear on it. Because honestly, I don’t really like the whole faking a relationship either.”

Cora snorts. “Yeah, I could tell by how you honestly weren’t really selling that.”

What the hell Scott sees in this family, Stiles really doesn’t know. Talia at least has more or less moved on from things, and doesn’t have resentment seething off her every single time Stiles enters the room, but the rest of them? He’d almost prefer an assassination attempt.

“I just also want you to get clear that magic’s not easy, and if we’re going to do the whole arm’s-length thing, it’s hard if you fuck up something on a kanima-ish level and I have go out and kill it, okay?” Stiles says. “Which you could do when you’re trying to find your werewolf repellant.”

“But you’re not going to tell us how to kill you, are you?” Cora retorts.

“Me, no. Other werewolves, sure,” Stiles says. He grins at the disbelieving look she gives him. “Listen, werewolves aren’t monolithic, and there are tons of asshole ones just like Scott’s dad that I’m more than happy for you to take on if you’re suddenly going to rage like that.”

Cora snorts again. “You know, what happened to my dad aside, we’re actually not crazy bloodthirsty murderers. We just want to know how to take care of ourselves.”

“And I am honestly fine to leave it at mutual self-interest. Like I said, if we all understand where the overlap between what I want and what you want is, and that where it doesn’t overlap, you gotta watch out for you, then I think we’d get along just fine,” Stiles says. He glances over his shoulder, thinking he’d heard the other group breaking up. “Because it was never personal, you know.”

“Well, what about Derek?” Cora says, and then she actually kicks his foot when he doesn’t look at her fast enough. “You honestly want me to believe _that_ wasn’t personal?”

“That was—” Then Stiles bites his lip. He looks down, wishing for a second he could just run off, and then makes himself lift his head back up. He’s an asshole, he owns it, but there is a spectrum of asshole and he has never, ever been okay with falling on the same end of that as Scott’s dad. “Okay. Yeah. That was. But it wasn’t…it wasn’t personal about _Derek_ , okay? I mean, I know you automatically ignore every word that comes out of my mouth, but it wasn’t. He was just…there. Bad luck. I know that sounds really dismissive of him, and it’s just going to have to, because that’s the truth.”

Cora looks at him through eyes so slitted he’d almost think she was sleeping, if not for her heartbeat being too fast. She’s still enough to do any hunting werewolf proud, and when she finally does move again, Stiles has to catch himself from startling.

“That’s actually what he keeps saying, too,” Cora mutters. She suddenly smells…not like she likes Stiles (he honestly isn’t sure at this point if he’d recognize that on her), but the aggression in her scent has gone down by at least half. “Well, if you could just keep that from happening again, that’d be great.”

“I wasn’t planning on a repeat. I mean, at the least, I _do_ care about Scott,” Stiles says.

“Yeah. Yeah, well, maybe you should tell uncle Peter that,” Cora snorts. She starts digging in her pocket again and Stiles steps back before realizing that’s a different one from the one holding the mountain ash wand. “It might help with his stuff. Look, he was saying this stuff’s useful but I honestly would rather you know when I’m coming for your ass, so you can have it back.”

She tosses a little bottle at him. Stiles automatically swipes it out of the air, still distracted by what she’d just said, and Cora turns and walks off across the front lawn. He frowns at her back, decides not to call after her, and then looks at the bottle. Then untwists the cap and sniffs. It’s filled with de-scenter.

* * *

Stiles’ dad and Melissa and the Argents are going over to the bank to sort out this mysterious phone call, which may or may not be related to the potential new Gerard Argent haters they’d been talking about the last night. Allison’s mom tells her not to worry about it and just enjoy having time off, while Scott opts out because he and his mom have this kind of fragile, almost-too-okay-with-each-other vibe going where they’re obviously trying to use this to get back to normal. 

“But you’re really not going to look into it?” Scott says, as Allison drives both of them over to the Hale house. “This is usually the kind of thing you love.”

“Yeah, well, Dad said I’m grounded and I’m trying to not make trouble for him. At least, not this week,” Stiles shrugs.

For some reason, a threat to the Argents means Allison wants to talk to Derek, and when she mentioned he said he had some stuff for her to pick up, Scott smelled weird about it but said he was free to help out, so as far as either of them are concerned, Stiles is claiming he’s along for moral support. Which he is, and he gives Scott a good solid thump on the arm to show it. Scott is really not doing great because he just smiles and starts up a conversation with Allison about summer classes for some reason.

“Because Cora’s still got to take her English make-up, and Erica and I both have part-time jobs at the restaurant down the street,” Allison explains when Stiles can’t help himself and finally asks. “That animal shelter across from it had a posting for volunteers, and Scott was telling me he actually was part of a wolf-watch group when you lived more north of here, and…Scott?”

“I’m okay,” Scott says, very quietly, as he gets paler and paler.

Stiles moves forward to tell Allison to turn the car around, but she’s already pulling it over to the side of the road. The Hale house isn’t quite in view, but this is the last bend. “I told Derek to come meet us a little further up, because he’s got to carry those boxes and that’s as far as the footpath goes, but I can call him. Or go meet him if you want to just wait here,” Allison says, looking worriedly at Scott.

Scott gives her a short, tight nod. His hands are curled up into fists and tucked against his hips, and then there’s just the faintest prick of blood-scent—he’s clawing his own palms. Stiles curses to himself for not really thinking about bringing Scott back to where his dad had come temporarily back to life—he, Morrell, and Deaton had purged the hell out of the Hales’ basement, and he’d had his dad or Jordan bring over bucketloads of spirit-suppression charms on top of that. So in his head, that place had been cleared.

But he’s not Scott, and as Allison ultimately decides to get out of the car and walk up to meet Derek, Stiles scoots over as close as he can to the other man. He lifts his hand to Scott’s shoulder, but stops it just short of touching the other man when Scott flinches.

“Sorry,” Scott mutters. He ducks his head and stares at his knees. He’s smelling a little sour, just like he did when the panic attack at graduation started. “I know I wasn’t even awake when you all saw him.”

“Well, you know my theories about the unconscious and sense memory, and how we can pick up hints even when we’re…sorry, I’m not helping,” Stiles says. He bites his lip, then digs out his phone and boots up one of his magic-detection apps. None of his charms are going off and he realizes he’s just checking for the sake of checking, but he doesn’t know if he can just pile on Scott or if that’ll make the other man bolt out of the car, like how he did at graduation, or—maybe he should just call Scott’s mom. “Um. You know, honestly, Derek’s got enough muscles, and for the record I am _very_ not interested but also, he does stick them out there, with the tight tees, and anyway the point is I think he can haul those boxes a few more yards if we back up the—”

“Can you open the window?” Scott asks.

Stiles drops his phone. It only goes as far as his knee and he scoops it back up, then stuffs it into his pocket as he leans over the other man to get at the button. Which doesn’t work, because Allison turned off the engine, so Stiles grits his teeth and pops the door instead. Then hisses as he feels Scott move. He tries to back up to grab the other man, only to end up flopping sideways as the door swings out way faster than he’d predicted and—Scott grabs him instead, pulling him back into the car.

“Whoa, you okay?” Scott asks.

“Um,” Stiles says, because honestly, he can’t come up with anything else.

Scott gives him a tug, grunting, and Stiles twists around and has a false start when his knee slides off the seat. Then gets one hand over the top of the driver’s seat and is finally able to leverage himself up. He still ends up co-opting Scott’s lap, but Scott seems cool with it. And also seems cool with it when Stiles wraps one arm over his shoulder and pushes forehead-first into the crook of his neck. 

At least at first. But then Scott suddenly takes a deep, uneven breath, and his scent sours again. “I—want him to _stop_ ,” he mutters.

“Him—you mean your dad?” Stiles says, all the blood in his body suddenly turned to ice.

Scott sniffs, then tightens his hold on Stiles. “He’s not back, Stiles, he’s not—” he inhales again, then lets it out in a short, humorless laugh “—this is just so stupid, Mom and I weren’t this scared when we actually didn’t _know_ he was dead, and now we do and why is it almost worse?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out why and fix it,” Stiles says. He rubs his face against Scott’s neck, then hikes up his chin so that they switch positions and the other man’s head is tucked under it. “I’ll figure it out. Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out.”

That seems to settle Scott down. His breathing gets under control and he slumps against Stiles, who starts petting the back of his neck. But then he sighs and pushes away. Scott runs one hand repeatedly through his hair, looking tired.

“It’s not some magic thing, Stiles,” he says. He tries to smile, like reassuring Stiles should even be anywhere on his list of priorities, and then gives up and just shrugs. “I wish it was. I really did. But it’s not, it’s just…I was in his head, kind of. He saw this place, and I saw how he saw it, and I just—for a second there I just—but I’m not him. And I know that, by the way, so it’s not possession. I’m just not…really fine. If that even makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does,” Stiles says after a moment. He edges his hand over so its knuckles are bumping against Scott’s leg. When Scott doesn’t move away, he lifts his hand and just puts it between Scott and the car seat, so the weight’s there. “I mean, I’m not going to pretend I really get all of that. But I can see and hear and smell you, and I—I wish I could—is there something I can—”

“I don’t know.” Scott rubs the heel of his hand over his face, grimacing. “That sounds really awful. I don’t mean it like that, I just…I don’t think this is fixable with magic, Stiles. I think I just have to…well, deal with my dad. Even though he’s dead.”

“I honestly would like to repeatedly kill him over and over again,” is all Stiles can come up with.

Scott glances over, then snorts. Then suddenly tenses, looking out the door past Stiles—just as quickly, he grabs Stiles’ elbow. “It’s just them.”

“Um, yeah, it’s…us,” Allison says nervously. She hefts the box she’s holding. “Sorry. We didn’t hear you talking till we just came up and Derek and I were both really worried—we weren’t sure if you coming over here was the best idea, but you said you wanted to come—not that I’m saying it was your fault.”

“There’s just another two boxes back up at the house. I’ll go get them,” Derek says, setting down the armful he has. He pauses to look at Scott, then starts back into his usual scowl as Stiles gets out of the car. “What were you doing?”

“Not him, okay, it’s just body language differences,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes at the massive jealousy waves coming off Derek. That’s one member of the Hale family he wouldn’t mind dousing in de-scenter. “I’ll get the boxes, you stay with Scott. Are they out on the porch or do I have to knock?”

That catches Derek off-guard and he pivots towards Scott, saying pretty much as an afterthought that they’re on the porch. Then he realizes what he’s done and turns back, but by then Allison’s already ducked into the car and asking if Scott needs water or wants to come out and stand for a second, and he’s always going to be more involved with that than with Stiles.

Which, honestly, is a point in his favor as far as Stiles is concerned. He jogs around the corner and then goes up the path to the house, absently noting the new motion sensors on spikes that dot the lawn. They’ve done a good job of blending them into the decorative rock edging, but he can smell the metal bits and…it’s Talia stepping out to meet him.

Stiles slows down, then resumes his pace. “I’m just getting the last two,” he says, nodding at the boxes. “Derek’s down with Scott at the car.”

“Yes, I heard he’s having another panic attack?” Talia says. She smells a little concerned but isn’t exactly racing down the path. Which also tends to make Stiles feel…slightly more likely to ask questions first if his dad ever turns up dead around her, since that’s a _real_ reaction, given where they all stand, and not one made up just to be nice. “Did you want to get him any water?”

“Scott’s not having an attack, he’s just having a moment,” Stiles says. He stops at the bottom of the porch steps, and then, when she just keeps looking at him, comes up them to the boxes. “Anyway, we’re going to get going in a second, so for the record, if you want to tell Peter this isn’t part of a big conspiracy against him—”

“I’d rather not,” Talia says dryly. She moves out of Stiles’ way, but obviously isn’t going to go back into the house any time soon. “Mostly because I don’t see any reason why he needs to know you stopped by. Unless there is a reason?”

Stiles pauses. He probably shouldn’t have mentioned Peter to begin with, but these days he just assumes the guy is going to come up. Well, it’s out now, so no point in hiding it. “No, although since I’m here…I don’t know if he mentioned this to you, but lately when we run into each other, we have this routine where he accuses me of doing magic stuff and I point out that yeah, I do magic stuff and it’s not the same as wanting to kill him. So if he’s around, I could just explain to him that de-scenter doesn’t work on inanimate objects, so there’s no point to wasting it on the motion sensors.”

“He’s not here,” Talia says. She pauses, not so much because of Stiles as something else that’s bothering her, and then seems to make up her mind. “He moved out, actually.”

“He…moved?” Stiles says, blinking. “Where? I mean—he’s gone? I thought—but I thought—don’t we have a meeting next week at his firm to go through everything for the state police? Were you going to mention at any point that we needed to get a new lawyer?”

“Did you think Peter was representing you?” Talia says, sounding surprised. “I thought—well, no, I know I told your father—”

Stiles makes a face. “Okay, no, I remember, and I didn’t mean it like that, I don’t want to be his client any more than he wants me to lecture him about magic. But he’s been handling all the talking with them. If Dad’s got to take that over, I need to let him know.”

“Well, no, that’s not what I meant. Peter’s still in town,” Talia says. “He just doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Oh,” Stiles says.

Talia continues to watch him. Her eyes flick across his face, dip for a second and then come back up to his eyes, while the corners of her mouth begin to pull down into a frown. Then she purses her lips and they reset into a thin line. “Why are you sniffing?” she asks. “And what’s that noise?”

“Oh, um—” Stiles is thrown enough to answer honestly “—charms. In my pocket. And I’m just—I can smell what you’re cooking.”

“Yes,” Talia says, drawing out the word, to communicate that she’s being really patient about the fact that with that much olive oil and scallions, anybody could smell it.

“So there’s not de-scenter everywhere, so I’m…um, look, can you hold still for a second?” Stiles says, pulling his phone out. He wraps his string of charms around it and snaps a photo of Talia, and then runs it through three apps. “Oh. Okay.”

“Are you testing something?” Talia asks. She’s starting to smell annoyed.

Stiles doesn’t really want to answer her, but if he just walks off, she’s going to call his dad. And if he tries to make something up—she’ll call his dad. Damn it. He’s really messed this one up. Honestly, he should have just come up with an excuse to keep Scott out of the car. “…yeah,” he mutters, putting his phone away. “I…just…so everything seems normal here.”

“Yes, I think so.” When he looks up, Talia’s glancing over her shoulder into the house. She suddenly smells nervous, although she keeps it from showing in her face. And then that goes away, and so quickly that Stiles wonders for a second if his apps are miscalibrated. “Did you have a reason to not think so? Is that why you’re here?”

“Um, no, we’re—Derek apparently had some things to help with the latest Gerard Argent fallout and I just wasn’t sure why Peter moved out,” Stiles says. Then grimaces. “I mean. Look, is he all right?”

That nervous smell comes back, but just a little bit, and it’s fluctuating so much that Stiles needs three (small, non-obvious, because he’s not going to repeat that mistake) sniffs to be sure he’s not just imagining it. “As far as I know,” Talia says, voice flattening. “Again, did you have reason to not think so?”

“Well—he just—look, as far as bones to pick with him go, I’ve almost got the whole skeleton, but even I get that he really cares about his family and it just seems weird,” Stiles says. Then grimaces again, pushing his charms back in his pocket, when Talia’s eyes drift down to them. “So, um, interesting thing about possession. There are charms for that. And also, depending on the type, your scent might change. And—I just—I mean, it already happened once and—”

Talia’s scent steadies, and suddenly, Stiles realizes that’s not actually nervousness he’s been smelling on her. It’s anger—it just smells off because she’s controlling it so tightly. And from the precision in how she lets out it, it’s control and not repression. “Stiles, are you suggesting that I have to be possessed to tell you Peter’s moved out?” she says, every word shaped for maximum burn. “Or are you suggesting that _he’s_ possessed simply for not being where you expect him to be?”

“I’m—I’m just—I’m not trying to go after you!” Stiles finally blurts out. Honestly, alphas have nothing on Talia Hale when she’s giving you the look of death, and her voice hasn’t even gone up in volume. “I’m not! I stopped trying to kill—I never even _was_ trying to kill you! I never even really wanted to hurt any of you, we were just—”

“Well, you may not have wanted that, but you have done it. And to be clear, I don’t blame you for what Rafael McCall got up to, or what Gerard Argent’s done in the past. I don’t even blame you for anyone who came to town to find your pack and pick a fight. I’m not an idealist about these things, Stiles, but when I’m picking my family’s friends and foes, I _do_ think about how much they clean up afterward,” Talia says sharply. She takes a step back into the house, then reaches for the door. “And you haven’t exactly done that, even after we started helping _you_.”

“Okay, so that’s not fair,” Stiles says.

Talia stops abruptly, and then turns slowly back around. The thing that’s scary about her is how she doesn’t seem to even think they aren’t on the same level, despite her being unarmed—as far as Stiles can tell—and plain human. And what’s more, she seems that way without coming off as if she’s just stupid or has forgotten what he is; he never doubts for a second that she’s already taken the werewolf part into account.

“I mean, I have,” Stiles says. “I went through your house, and Peter’s office, and—you don’t even know half the places in this town I’ve scrubbed down. Peter’s tried to find out but trust me, he hasn’t found all of them. And my dad and I—”

“I think you can keep your dad out of it. I don’t have anything to fault him on here,” Talia says.

“Well, I can’t, because if you want to talk about clean-up, what about the stuff you were pulling with him before? Jumping him at the station and now everybody here thinks he’s either a patsy or got brought in by you on purpose to knock out the old sheriff,” Stiles snaps. Because sure, Talia’s intimidating. Cool. So were pretty much all the people he’s killed. “Like we’re the only ones who use people.”

That hits, he can see it in Talia’s eyes. It sets her back for a second.

But not for good. She takes a breath, blinks, and looks at him again, and that one went through but it went _through_ , and the rest of her is still standing around it. “Stiles, I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with you. I’m just going to point out that I would be a terrible sister and mother if I just wrote off what you did with Derek and Peter because we ‘evened up’ or anything like that. As for your father, I’m not going to do that to him again.”

“Well, but you still did it in the first place,” Stiles says.

“I know. And so does he,” Talia says in a measured tone. 

She lets him sit with that for a second. He could keep going and point out that just because his dad lets it happen doesn’t mean it’s okay, and she could point out that he doesn’t listen to what he says. And on and on down the rabbit hole, and they’re both too smart to go for that. 

“I don’t even know what you mean about Peter,” Stiles finally mutters. “Derek, yeah, I…really fucked that one up. And I’d offer to do something there, except one, he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, and two, he also seems a _lot_ more likely to move on if we don’t. But what mess did I leave with Peter? I haven’t even really talked to him since Rafael’s dad possessed him.”

“Are you serious?” Talia says. Then, as the seconds tick on, her outraged expression slides into (still hostile) disbelief. “You are serious. You honestly haven’t connected the dots.”

“ _What_ dots?” Stiles snaps. “He didn’t even like me before! And afterward it’s not like he wants help from me. He just wants me to tell him all about werewolves and magic so he can go off and do something stupid that blows all of my remedial spellwork up.”

Talia draws herself up in the doorway. She’s not moving particularly fast, but something about the deliberateness of the motion puts Stiles on guard. “Have you ever been possessed?”

“No,” Stiles says, frowning. “No, but—I know about it, if you have questions I can—”

“Stiles, Peter moved out because his screaming was keeping all of us up at night,” Talia snaps. “He keeps having nightmares about having someone _else in his head_. Did you know possession does _that_ to people, with everything you know about it? Or did you just think he was trying to annoy you?”

Then she turns and goes into the house. This time, Stiles doesn’t call after her.

* * *

“Son, you’re worrying me,” Stiles’ dad says from the bedroom doorway.

“I’m relaxing,” Stiles says. 

His dad doesn’t leave.

“Scott’s mom told me to,” Stiles tries.

His dad leaves. For a second Stiles continues staring at the ceiling, and then he rolls over and stares at the empty doorway in disbelief. The door’s still open, which he should probably shut. They don’t have guests over right now, but they’re going to in a little bit, when the Hales and the Argents and Jordan and Tara all convene to figure out what to do with the time that Gerard Argent sold some feuding Canadian hunters contaminated wolfsbane and got half of them turned into werewolves and half of them killing themselves.

He gets one foot down on the floor, and then a bunch of footsteps come down the hall. Stiles curses, realizing what his father’s really up to, and looks at the window. But he stops to think about where he put his phone and is too slow, and by then Melissa and his dad are both in the room.

“Stiles, what are you doing?” Melissa says, coming to stand over by the foot of his head.

“I’m not doing anything. Nothing! Nada.” Stiles spreads his hands, then lets them flop against the mattress. “Nil. See? Chilling, like ordered.

Melissa stares at him, then looks at Stiles’ dad. “How long has he been up here?”

“Hour and a half,” his dad says. He glances around, like he’s looking for a chair, and then no-look flops onto the bed to trap Stiles’ legs. “Hasn’t hacked the station systems, I haven’t gotten any texts from Jordan or Tara, nobody’s called me about him, no dead bodies have turned up.”

Yelping, Stiles shoves himself up to tackle his dad, but that’s a mistake because that leaves room for Melissa to maneuver in behind him. She doesn’t go for grabbing, just curls up so he’s squished between the two of them. “I think he really has stayed in the house, too,” she tells Stiles’ father. “All of my drugs are still where they’re supposed to be.”

“I’m not doing anything!” Stiles complains into his dad’s shoulder.

“Scott?” Melissa calls. “Scott? Baby? Has Stiles gotten into anything lately?”

A couple minutes later Scott jogs into the room, looking worried. “Sorry, I was in the garage,” he says. “What’s…going…on…”

“I’m being ambushed!” Stiles protests.

Scott looks uncertain about this, though when his mom lets out a pointed rumble in his direction, he reluctantly slides towards her side of the bed. “Is everything okay?”

“My kid’s not doing anything,” Stiles’ dad grunts. “So nope, pretty sure something’s wrong.”

“This is insane. Scott, c’mon, help,” Stiles pleads. He gets one arm free, then twists his shoulders and squeezes them past his dad. “Scott?”

His best friend in the entire world eyes things for another second. Then Scott pulls up his shoulders and gets that determined face on, and dives in there…to bundle Stiles back into the middle of the group. “You’ve been really quiet since we got back from the Hales’ place,” Scott says, semi-apologetically, as he sits on Stiles’ hands so his mom can steal Stiles’ charm string. “I didn’t want to ask, but it’s been going on for a while. I’m worried too.”

“Ugh, you people,” Stiles mutters. “This is so not productive pack behavior. Packs aren’t bullshit dominance-submission hierarchies, they’re fluid role systems.”

Melissa sighs. “Stiles, in case you’ve forgotten, we can do this all night.”

They actually can’t, they have guests over and on top of that, those guests include Talia, who Stiles still has to be publicly nice to because as far as he can tell, his dad actually does want the relationship, and Peter, who Stiles apparently has sidelined into the beginning stages of a psychological crisis. Or something like that.

“So Talia called me,” Stiles’ dad says, because also, damn it, he knows Stiles. He’s not even looking Stiles in the face, but just from the way he starts rumbling under his words, Stiles can tell the guy knew Stiles was going to start twitching. “She wanted to apologize.”

Stiles goes still. “What?”

“She said she lost her temper with you, and wanted to let you know—she and Peter had just had a fight,” Stiles’ dad says. “Something about him telling her she needed to back off and give him space because she couldn’t help him with something, and she…has issues with this, but she wanted you to know those are her issues and not you.”

Melissa curls up against Stiles’ back and leans her chin on his shoulder. “Is this about Peter moving out? Laura texted me.”

“Why is she texting you?” Stiles’ father asks. “Wait, are you two having coffee again?”

“More like she wanted to know if these were symptoms of something supernatural, because she thinks it’s insane that her mother and Peter would fight like that,” Melissa mutters. Her hair brushes over Stiles as she flips it to the other side of her neck. “Though I might end up buying her coffee if it stops her from taking it out on his therapist. I know him, he’s a good guy and we don’t need another murder in the hospital.”

“Peter moved out?” Scott says, sounding surprised. “Wow. Derek didn’t mention anything earlier. I thought he was a little tense, but he just said it was from Peter dumping a bunch of records on him last-minute and not telling him why.”

“Well, probably because you didn’t ask,” Stiles mumbles. Then grimaces. He doesn’t need Melissa’s sudden stillness to know he’s just messed up again. “Sorry. That wasn’t—not your fault, Scott.”

Melissa forgives him, because she just thwaps him on the back of the head and then moves so that she’s smushing more of him. Scott never blamed him in the first place, and smells even more concerned as he contorts himself around Stiles’ dad to look Stiles in the face.

“’m fine,” Stiles says preemptively.

“I think you’re kind of not,” Scott says, his shoulders hunching a little in guilt for poking Stiles. Then Stiles’ dad moves over and Scott hunkers down so that he and Stiles are at eye-level. “Do you feel bad about what happened to him?”

“I know I didn’t set up that trap, okay?” Stiles says, suddenly annoyed. Which is a stupid reaction to have, because all of the rest of them have had a lot more to deal with and here they are, trying to look after him anyway and it’s not their fault he can’t handle one freaked-out normie. “I mean, first of all, what’s the point of locking up somebody in an eternal torture box if you don’t get to live long enough to celebrate ten-year anniversaries on top of it? And it’s not like I told Peter how to trigger it either, I just didn’t think to check all the books for triggers because we didn’t think Whittemore was that sophisticated. Also, we weren’t friends.”

“Mmmhmm,” Melissa says.

Stiles exhales irritably, letting himself sink into the mattress. Then, mid-inhale, he surges upward.

Or tries to. Scott gets knocked away, but Melissa and Stiles’ dad just rise up a couple inches, suckering Stiles in with the slack, and then squish him back down. Their heartbeats barely budge. “And you know, he was messing with me right back, because there is no way you need to be that elaborate just to stop somebody from checking into your family and it wasn’t about Dad being the sheriff either, he could’ve totally just, I don’t know, _told the rest of the firm_ I was trying to find a way in. He didn’t because he had some other agenda and the guy obviously looks at blackmail as just another version of three-dimensional chess.”

“Son,” Stiles’ dad starts.

“Besides, I tried to help him! I did help him! I’ve done so much anti-possession research that I should get my doctorate in it,” Stiles complains. “It’s not like I just left it up to the druids. I _did it myself_.”

Scott sighs, and elbow-walks back in so he can see Stiles. “So he’s not better and you feel bad.”

Stiles opens his mouth and Scott looks at him with those big, brown, soulful eyes, just wanting to know the truth because the truth sets you free and all that other idealistic stuff that somehow doesn’t stop him from immediately jumping whoever’s trying to get Stiles from behind. And—Stiles sinks his chin into the blankets.

“I don’t know what else to look up,” he mumbles. “He’s not—it’s not like he’s giving me any clues.”

“Well, I’m not sure it’s magical, whatever he’s dealing with,” Scott says tactfully.

Stiles makes a face at him, which Scott doesn’t deserve and which he ignores as he reaches out and pets Stiles’ shoulder. “I thought of that,” Stiles mutters.

“You know, not everything just gets fixed,” Melissa says, sitting up behind him.

“I—” Then Stiles sucks in the rest of what he’s been about to say, because it’d been coming out high and harsh and loud, and he’s just—it’s just so stupid. He shouldn’t be this upset. He should be able to deal. “I know. I get that—possession is bad, it’s literally a mind-rape, I get that. I just—what I can do—”

“I don’t think she was trying to say you didn’t understand,” Stiles’ dad says, looking over at Stiles at Melissa.

They’re having one of their wordless strategic communions, and that’s always really cool except again, that makes it seem like this is a major problem that they need to spend that kind of energy on, and it’s really not. “It’s just I’m trying to do what I can do,” Stiles tries to explain. “And I know I can’t always fix things, and that sometimes things are just too complicated for just me, but the things that I _can_ do something about…and I’m not dehumanizing Peter, I just—he just seems like somebody whose problem doesn’t have backst—who I can just—who isn’t—”

“You can help him because he’s not us,” Scott says. Right after he says it, his eyes widen in surprise and he sucks his breath. He pauses, watching Stiles, and then, being him, doubles down. “You know, since I know you really hate not being able to do anything for us.”

“Ah, hell,” Stiles’ dad mutters, and then he tightens his hold on Stiles. “I thought I told you, it’s not just on you to take care of everybody.”

“And it’s really not your problem what Rafael did,” Melissa says. Near the end her voice gets a little wobbly. She shifts back, pressing her hair away from her face with both hands, clearly annoyed with herself. Then she drops her hands and looks at Stiles. “I know—”

“I know I can’t fix that kind of thing,” Stiles says, very quietly, as his father rolls over and tucks up against him. “I know that, and I know you just have to work through it. I just…it’s really hard to watch.”

“Yeah. Yeah, and I wish I could do something about that,” Melissa says, her eyes drifting away from Stiles, mouth twisting bitterly. Then Scott reaches out and touches her arm; she freezes, gaze snapping up, and then a flash of pain goes across her face, just before she abruptly twists around and wraps her arm around Scott’s shoulders. “But…Stiles, when I said not everything gets fixed—I mean not everything does. Sometimes you just…figure out how to keep living.”

That…it shouldn’t _be_ like that, a small part of Stiles still wants to say. And honestly, maybe that’s why he and Scott are so tight, because they both want to believe in impossible things.

“And you can still do things, I think she’s just saying…don’t think so hard about whether you’re doing enough,” Scott says. He checks with his mom, then slides out of her arms and curls down next to Stiles again. “I mean, because I don’t think we’re looking at it like that. It just matters that you’re here and offering.”

“Well, except that I’m not, I’m just…displacing onto Peter. Or something like that,” Stiles says. Then closes his eyes. “Ugh. I _am_ dehumanizing him. I’m totally turning into—”

“You’re not Rafael, for God’s sake,” Stiles’ dad mutters. “And don’t even start about I’m your father because I am, and yeah, you’ve made mistakes here but you’re my kid and this is our pack and we will _deal_ with it. All right?”

There is one answer that his father’s going to accept, so Stiles keeps his mouth shut. Which his dad knows how to read, and the man lets out a deep, long sigh, but otherwise doesn’t do anything. Except move his knee when Melissa flops back down next to them. And then his arm, as Scott shifts over to make room. Because he really isn’t budging till Stiles agrees with them. None of them are.

Stiles didn’t really think they would, but…sometimes it just slips out of his mind, he thinks. Being able to back out of the problems and see the family and the _pack_.

“But I gotta talk to Peter, right?” he finally says.

“Just tell him you’re not going to bug him anymore, and if he’s got questions about magic, he can send them to me and I’ll take your answers back to him,” his dad says. “Should be easy enough.”

* * *

The living room is the biggest room in the house and it’s still a tight fit once everybody gets in there. There’s some spillover into the kitchen, especially once the Argents bring out their newest catering options—smoked duck banh-mi-style sandwiches—and Talia reveals that she’s decided to find a gauntlet in there to take up and bring a gigantic lamb biryani with her.

“Your dad said he really liked Ally’s mom’s roast chicken,” Cora accuses. Not explains, her tone makes it crystal-clear it’s an accusation.

“That’s just an opinion and not a commitment, and her food is about all Dad wants to talk about, because she’s got some really terrifying ideas about how the police work,” Stiles tells her, helping himself to some more biryani. “Because we actually try to _hide_ that we’re violating the law, when we do it?”

Cora snorts as she takes her third half-sandwich, since apparently it’s okay to favor the Argents so long as it’s done non-verbally. “Whatever. Listen, my uncle wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah, so, about that. Our little run-ins are going to stop now,” Stiles says. He glances past her and into the living room, where Peter and Talia are still holed up with Melissa and Victoria around the end table—everybody else went into the garage so Stiles’ dad could explain how to properly hack a taser’s voltage settings—and then picks up his plate. “Dad’s gonna let people know when I need to come in to do something, and if anyone wants to watch, they need to let us know or else I’m just going to do it some other time. It’s basic magic safety, like lab glasses—don’t interrupt something that could invert reality. And we’ll coordinate around other stuff too—I’m not going to heads-up every time I run out for milk but big events, that sort of thing. We live on the opposite side of town anyway, and this place isn’t that tiny.”

He goes and gets a refill of his water too, and then recrosses the kitchen to go back to the living room. Cora doesn’t say anything, just stares at him, and then hurriedly catches up so she’s about a foot behind when he comes up to the end table. Peter looks up sharply but Stiles just gives him a nod and settles back down with his laptop to figure out if he can clear up a critical two-week gap in Gerard’s known itinerary the last time that guy went to Canada.

Shortly after that, Peter and Cora go into the kitchen. They don’t say anything, which Stiles thinks is weird until he realizes what all the phone noises are: they’ve figured out they need to text back and forth to avoid the werewolf hearing. Then Peter comes back out. He pauses and looks very intently at Stiles, only to abruptly turn away when Talia looks up. The two of them had seemed more or less normal when they’d arrived, but they act a little stiffly around each other until Peter’s sat back down and Melissa asks whether he has any legal friends over in Fresno.

So Stiles thinks that’s it, until they’ve wrapped for the night and Talia suddenly turns to him. “Are you going to the barbecue?” she asks.

“I…should I?” he says, blinking.

She’s oddly stiff again. “Stiles, I told your father—”

“Yeah, well, honestly, I had that coming,” he says.

He didn’t plan to, it just came out. Talia’s surprised too, and for a moment they just look at each other. Then Talia draws in a breath; she shakes off the stiffness, but still looks as if she’s going into unfamiliar territory. “I think you did,” she finally says. “But…I am sorry about what you’ve gone through. You should come—you’ll meet a lot of people. And I know that may not necessarily be your goal while you’re here, but it could be useful.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He stands back and she hesitates, then starts to turn. “Listen, about Dad…I don’t think you ever actually hurt him. But that’s just because he _got_ it, you know?”

“I do. I know.” Talia hesitates again. “I think that’s why I changed my mind, and ended up not wanting to hurt him.”

“Well, okay. I—yeah, I get that,” Stiles says. “So…yeah, I might drop by the barbecue.”

“Good,” Talia says, and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many endnotes on the problems of Scott as a character, but I think where he really started to slide past the point of no return was midway through season two when he stopped being a somewhat well-meaning but still realistically self-centered and shortsighted teenage boy and started being a Role Model. Season one, he was pretty infuriatingly stupid, but teenagers are that. I can also understand if you're acting like an idiot because you're freshly traumatized and being threatened with death all the time. But then all the trauma seemed to magically get handwaved by the true alpha stuff, which, okay, great, power being a cureall is totally the messaging you want to send to your audience.
> 
> It's tempting to just make Stiles the know-it-all savior, but then he falls into the same trap as Scott where he gets unrelatedly amazing. And I like the idea that Stiles in need brings out Scott's sneaky, kind of asshole side, because if Scott's going to regularly bend those morals for anyone, Stiles (or Melissa) make more sense than Allison.


	5. Chapter 5

So Stiles does actually make an effort in the time between his little bedroom retreat and the barbecue. He updates his dad on where he’s going, doesn’t hack any systems related to the town, and when Scott or anyone else drops a comment about hearing that Peter found a place downtown or that Peter’s been asking about this or that, he doesn’t look into it. Doesn’t even google Peter’s alleged new address.

He does break down and ask Morrell whether any of her druid friends are psychologists, and if so, whether there is such a thing as former-possessee counseling. But he tells himself that’s as much for Scott, so it’s not really going against his _dad_. It’s just him undermining his willpower, and hey, he never said he wasn’t self-defeating like that. And anyway, when she gives him a couple names and he looks up their publications, he just downloads them all without reading through them and actually figuring out which ones are cases with thinly-disguised supernatural elements.

So when Stiles strolls into the roped-off area behind the hospital, he has absolutely no idea what Peter’s been up to and no expectations whatsoever. “I have no idea what you want,” he says when Peter corners him behind some crates of soda within his first ten minutes. “I’m not _supposed_ to know what you want.”

“Yes, and I’d like you to explain that to me, considering your _numerous_ previous offers of help,” Peter snaps.

“Okay,” Stiles says after a second, eyeing the situation. They’re in a relatively people-free area, but it’s only about ten feet wide, and the crates aren’t stacked so tall as to hide them well. “Is there anything in that tent there?”

Peter glances over his shoulder, twitches like he’d forgotten they’re in the middle of a centerpiece of the town’s collective social calendar, and then looks at the tent. “Ice,” he says, obviously reluctant.

“Well, we can go with the ice, or we can go with the hospital where you’re gonna have to be alone with me out of screaming range,” Stiles points out. “Or, okay, we can take the third option and you can go nominate a chaperone.”

For a second, he’s pretty sure Peter wants to deny that that was even remotely the cause of any hesitation. Then the man screws up his face and nods at the ice tent. He doesn’t start walking till Stiles starts, and he’s got his hands in his pockets like Stiles totally can’t see the taser outline.

Stiles hears his name whispered in a worried voice across the parking lot, and glances over to see Scott gesturing at Tara to go over. He spares a second to shake his head, then promises himself he’ll make this quick and ducks into the tent. “Okay, what is your problem?” he says to Peter. “You thought I was doing stuff, so I stopped. Now you want me to do stuff?”

“That was never the problem,” Peter says sharply, twisting around. He moves over to one side of the tent entrance, then switches to the other. He can’t seem to decide whether he wants to keep his exit open or keep an eye on Stiles, who is having this conversation but who isn’t going to position himself so that he’s totally defenseless. And then he suddenly rounds on Stiles. “Did Talia tell you to stop?”

“Look, I’m out of your family business at this point,” Stiles says, holding up his hands. “I get that the whole thing with Derek was a little confusing, but I’m not—I don’t want to get involved with your family. I never did want to, and now we don’t have a reason to, really, so I’m not gonna fake—”

“Of course, I _completely_ understand,” Peter hisses. “Never mind all of the carnage in your wake, there’s no need when you’re a werewolf who can just move on.”

“I’m not—I’m trying to be nice to you!” Stiles snaps back, finally losing his temper. “It’s not about being a werewolf, it’s about I don’t know what the hell you’re yelling at me for when I’ve been leaving you alone and your whole _deal_ was you didn’t want me interfering—”

“And when did I say that?” Peter says acidly. “When? When I was possessed, perhaps? Because I don’t recall you _ever_ actually _asking_ me what I wanted.”

“All right, fine, what the _hell_ do you want from me?” explodes out of Stiles. He knows he’s not managing himself, even before Peter suddenly flinches and pulls the taser half-out of his pocket. He—he can’t. He makes himself sit down on a cooler and stare at his fucking hands till the fucking claws go away. “What? What do you want? Do you want me to say I’m sorry? I’m sorry you were possessed, okay? I’m sorry Scott’s dad was an incredibly resilient fucking sociopath, and I’m sorry David Whittemore was a lot better with magic than I gave him credit for and I didn’t figure out his plan till you and Scott’s mom triggered all the boobytraps. I’m sorry, those were all my fuck-ups and are you fucking happy now?”

Except the claws aren’t going away. This is not great, Stiles thinks distantly. He needs to hide them because any second now, somebody could walk in, and while he can cover up a lot of stuff with misdirection patter and judiciously-deployed blurring charms, in broad daylight in a crowd is not ideal. And besides, his dad told him he wasn’t dealing with Peter anymore. He told himself he wasn’t.

“I don’t see how Scott’s father or David had anything to do with you,” Peter says. Incredibly, when Stiles looks up, the other man seems genuinely confused. In a wary, ready-to-blame kind of way, but still. He’s literally questioning why Stiles is tearing himself up in front of him. “You didn’t even know David.”

“Well—” Then Stiles just exhales. He leans down and rests his elbows on his knees, and suddenly, he’s just tired. His claws go away and he can’t even summon up the energy to relieved. “What, so you don’t want my apology?”

“Are you asking me? Or are you criticizing me?” Peter says, starting to get angry again. “Because if it’s the second—”

“Look, I just…I don’t know what you want,” Stiles mutters, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’m a werewolf, okay? Not a mind-reader. And I just…do you want to just argue with me all the time?”

Peter doesn’t answer. One second goes by, and then another. Then he breathes in and out in a quick burst, like he’s gearing up for something, except he doesn’t do anything.

Eventually, Stiles has to look up. He finds Peter staring back at him as if they’ve stumbled onto an alien landscape, and Stiles is possibly the first recognizable thing Peter’s seen in a while but also, Peter may not trust his senses. And then Stiles frowns. “You’re not wearing de-scenter.”

“No,” Peter says, twitching. His body tenses like he might leave, and then he lets out a long, strained breath. “Your father said…the other night. That if he can see someone but can’t smell them, that actually puts werewolves on edge, and makes them more likely to attack. And I’m not…actually hiding from you.”

“You just wanted an edge, I get it,” Stiles says wearily.

“I _wanted_ ,” Peter starts sharply. But then he reins himself in. He’s still not thrilled about sharing space with Stiles, but for some reason, he seems to be trying to calm himself down. “I wanted to understand what was going on. I still want to understand what’s going on. I—this isn’t intuitive. The supernatural. I don’t understand it.”

Stiles starts to say he still doesn’t follow, then stops himself. “So…what do you want me to do about it?” he says instead. “Or did you want me to do something about it?”

“I don’t know,” Peter says, after a very long pause. “I…need to understand what’s going on. What happened—all of it, not just what happened to me. And the rest of you seem to know all of it so well that you don’t—you don’t even try to explain it, and…you were keeping some of it from me. I can tell that much.”

“Yeah, I was,” Stiles says. “But look, it wasn’t personal. It was I didn’t want to die or set my pack up to die, and I don’t know if I can trust you. I might _owe_ you, but that doesn’t mean the same thing.”

Weirdly, that seems to make Peter relax. “See, _this_ I understand,” he says. “I’m not naïve, Stiles. I can play the game, and we _were_ doing that before, weren’t we?”

“Yeah, but…then Dad did the whole reveal, and I thought you both wanted us to be allies at that point, and that’s why you’re mad at me,” Stiles says, frowning. “For still playing.”

“Why on earth would you think that?” Peter says. “Did I give you the impression at some point that I was an idiot? I knew you were still trying to use us to further your own agenda.”

“Okay, then what—what are we talking about, here? I mean, again, what do you want from me?” Stiles asks. 

He’s starting to get exasperated, and it’s showing enough that Peter, who’d put the taser away, reaches into that pocket again. But first, Peter thinks it over. “I want to know what you’re doing,” he finally says. “I can’t tell anymore. It’s not—it doesn’t make sense to me. You’re offering to help, but it’s in ways that don’t seem to benefit you—you’re not _telling_ me when you’re trying to help. If I don’t know, where’s the leverage?”

And suddenly, it all starts to make a weird kind of sense to Stiles. “You’re mad because I stopped being a certain kind of asshole?”

“I thought it might be because now there are more supernatural nuances than I’ve learned yet, but I just—I don’t think all of this has to do with werewolves,” Peter goes on, as if Stiles hadn’t said anything. “You’re fundamentally the same person I thought I was working with before, but you’re not acting the same, and—and I also don’t think it has anything to do with my possession, because that wasn’t actually _insanity_ , that was literally a different person in my brain…”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “I think—”

Which is when Lydia fucking Martin, of all people, has to walk into the tent. “Stiles,” she says. She pauses, turns and looks Peter up and down—Peter clearly has no idea who she is—and then rolls her eyes. “Honestly, if you’re going to start bringing non-shifters into your pack, can you at least teach them that claiming to speak in your name isn’t going to get them an automatic guarantee of confidentiality?” 

Peter suddenly and clearly knows who she is. “I made no promises of confidentiality whatsoever,” he snaps. “I only pointed out that given which pack we were talking about, it made absolutely no sense for me to reveal any secrets to the public at large.”

“So you _did_ drop my name,” Stiles says.

“Oh, he dropped more than that,” Lydia says, one of her subtle-as-arsenic smiles on her face. She flicks nonexistent dust off her skirt, moving towards Stiles, as Peter shuts his mouth and smells increasingly edgy. “He dropped a whole laundry list of ridiculous claims in your name, Stiles. Saying you weren’t sure if you’ve exorcised a demon properly, that _Melissa McCall_ , of all people, seemed worried about it. To the point that, if one of my beta hadn’t checked and found out you really were living here, I would have just assumed he was lying through his teeth about even having met you.”

“Right,” Stiles says after a long moment. His phone is buzzing like crazy, meaning Lydia’s brought more than one pack member. Hopefully everyone else is on them. “Well, I’m really flattered that you came all the way over just to check on me, Lydia, but as you can tell, everything’s good here. Pack’s alive and well, and really not interested in a fight.”

Lydia’s face blanks out. It’s an act; a second later, she’s smiling again. “Stiles, please. Do you actually think I’d pick a fight with you?”

“No. I mean, usually, I’ve already beaten the crap out of your current boytoy by the time I’ve figured out you’ve dumped him on me again,” Stiles says, shrugging. “Which, hey, normally I don’t mind. But I’m trying to take a vacation here.”

“Here,” Lydia says flatly, having apparently decided Banter Time is over. “In this town.”

Stiles presses his lips together. The annoying thing is, Peter is still in the tent, and closer to Lydia than to the door, and he really is _trying_ not to get the other man hurt. “Look, what do you want? What did I do this time? Who do you want me to maul?”

Lydia’s eyes narrow. She studies Stiles, a little disbelieving—for her—and then she suddenly smiles with an alarming degree of amusement. “Oh, my God. You honestly are trying to lie low. No wonder your half-assed Emissary over there thinks you’re going insane.”

“What?” Stiles says.

“I did not—” Peter starts. When they both turn towards him, he clamps his mouth shut. He’s pale, Stiles notices, and then the sheer amount of nerves in his scent hits Stiles’ nose. Still, despite all that, he’s got the balls to force a few more words out of his mouth. “And what is an Emissary?”

This time Lydia’s stare is genuinely confused. She does it long enough that Stiles gets a chance to ease a few inches over to Peter, but just as he thinks he might be able to cut an ice cooler between the other man and her, she suddenly spins around to face him. “You didn’t even _know_.”

“I—look, okay, I’m not sure what you’ve heard about what we’ve been doing lately, but let me just say, this is _not_ the time,” Stiles snaps. He runs one hand over his head, then bites back a growl and just wraps one hand in the bottom of his shirt, ready to yank that up and over if he has to (sneak whip attack, plus Lydia’s hell on his special con edition tee collection). “And don’t even try to make me think you came all the way down here just to see if I was okay. I know we’ve had a lot of cherished moments together, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“No, you’re right,” Lydia says slowly. She takes a step back, her stance relaxing, not that that means much with her. “I didn’t come to see you. I came to see him.”

She nods at Peter, who takes a half-step back, transparently blindsided. He even looks at Stiles as if _Stiles_ is supposed to explain this gambit clusterfuck.

Lydia’s brows rise. “Did you or did you not mention you were looking for new opportunities?”

“I—” Peter’s eyes flick incredulously between her and Stiles, while his heartbeat skyrockets “—I wasn’t serious, I was just trying to give you a reason for why I’d be talking to another pack.”

“He’s not even an Emissary,” Stiles blurts out. “He’s known about werewolves for like a second, Lydia, he fucking sprayed _vervain_ as a ghost repellant, so what the hell you think you’re doing—”

“I think what I’m doing is asking someone who correctly identified the site of a former Nemeton whether he’d like a job with an alpha who doesn’t live on top of a magical volcano,” Lydia snorts. She folds her arms and looks from Peter to Stiles, and then slowly back to Peter. Her lips thin as she studies him and his tight, tense face. “But I should have known, anything to do with you isn’t even remotely what it seems—”

“Lydia,” comes an urgent hiss, and then a man about Stiles’ age and Jordan’s height comes rushing into the tent. “Alpha, there are _Argents_ here.”

“Oh, sh—look, they’re friendly,” Stiles snaps. He grabs his phone out of his pocket, then thinks the better of that and tosses it to Peter. The man catches it, startled eyes wide, and the movement draws the attention of both Lydia and her beta so Stiles can get another foot and a half on them. “They don’t have any more idea about things than Peter here, Gerard kept them totally in the dark, and anyway, this is _public_ , you can’t just—”

“I _can’t_ ,” Lydia says, as her beta snarls from beside her. She tilts her head. “I’m sorry, did you honestly just say that to me? About _Argents_?”

Peter sucks his breath in and the nerves in his scent tip over into panic. Stiles grimaces, glancing at him, and that makes him a half-beat slow as the beta decides he’s going to take a hostage and lunges for Peter. Who, to his credit, immediately dives behind a cooler as Stiles barrels into the beta’s waist rather than his head.

They still clip the cooler and Stiles hears a second, muffled thud as it knocks into Peter. He shoves the beta back and then bares his fangs, and the beta straightens up and his eyes glow and they’re _red_. Damn it, Stiles thinks, readying for another lunge, and then there’s a metallic _sprong_ sound.

The other alpha twitches, then suddenly spasms and falls to the ground, his eyes rolling back into his head. As the smell of ozone drifts up from him, Derek, standing in the tent doorway with taser in hand, blinks hard. “Shit, that actually works,” he mutters.

Stiles immediately turns towards Lydia, who’s got a telltale flush of fury creeping up her throat as she stands back, hands fisted at her side, and starts to open her mouth.

“ _Lydia_ ,” Melissa says, shouldering Derek aside. She ignores the way he stumbles, except to grab his elbow without looking and to basically toss him back out of the tent before he can fall on top of the recovering alpha. “I’m sorry, did you come here to discuss something with my pack?”

Melissa doesn’t even have her arms up, she just looks at Lydia, but that alone gives Lydia a moment’s pause. And in that second, Stiles gets across the tent and takes Peter by the shoulder and pulls him out from behind the cooler. “Come on, hate me later, but we gotta go,” he mutters. “Believe me, you do _not_ want to be at ground zero for this.”

Surprisingly, Peter doesn’t complain. Even more surprisingly, he sticks with Stiles as they make their way out of the tent and past Jordan and Tara, who are hurrying over as Allison, who’s standing over Derek and giving him a hand up while kicking his taser under some empty pallets, yells about heatstroke. Allison’s got it together enough to even give Stiles a nod as he immediately stuffs his shoulders under Peter’s arm like the other man needs to be helped away.

They get a decent few yards away from the tent, which is attracting all of the attention, and then Stiles levers himself out from Peter’s arm and steps back. Peter blinks, heartbeat still a little shocky, and then abruptly drops himself onto a nearby overturned plastic bin. It’s not quite strong enough to hold his weight and sinks under him so he sways sharply; he grabs at the edge to steady himself and then yanks his hand off, hissing in pain. Then grabs at his shoulder as he gingerly gets back to his feet.

“You okay?” Stiles says, having just scanned the immediate area and spotted no other members of Lydia’s pack. Then he looks closer at Peter. “I thought that was better. You got rid of the sling.”

“That may have been premature,” Peter mutters. He squeezes his shoulder, grimaces, and then carefully removes his hand. Then he looks at Stiles. His eyes widen slightly, as he remembers they’re not friendly, and then he’s silent for a few seconds. 

Stiles stares back, and then, uncomfortable, he turns around. His dad’s talking to a bunch of doctors, with Victoria Argent next to him. That…seems weird, with how unconcerned his dad looks, but then he tracks across the barbecue area and finds Scott holding the arm of another werewolf who looks a lot like the one who’d tried to jump Peter in the tent. Scott’s smiling in a very friendly way while shaking his head, with Chris Argent standing behind him looking grim (kind of superfluous, when the guy’s arm is white-fleshed where Scott’s fingers are digging in). Which makes more sense, Lydia never rolls into town without at least a pair of betas behind her. And there’s Talia, striding purposefully through the crowd with Laura in her wake, heading for the tent. That doesn’t seem—Melissa comes out just then, sees Talia, and stops her to chat. So that’s taken care of, Stiles guesses.

“I was trying to pretend to be you,” Peter suddenly says.

“What?” Stiles says, twisting back around.

Peter smells deeply embarrassed, along with lingering traces of pain and fear, and for a second Stiles thinks the man is going to stiff him out of sheer injured pride. But then Peter lets out a long, dragging exhale. “On a…magic-users forum I found. Online,” he finally explains. “It seemed legitimate. I made a profile and made it sound like you, so I could get more information about possession and exorcism rituals.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, blinking. “Did it…work?”

“For a while,” Peter says, blinking back. “Then _she_ started messaging me and she obviously knew you too well for that to work. She guessed it wasn’t you, but she didn’t seem to like you that much, so I thought at first I might as well keep talking to her.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Stiles says. “So you stopped, I’m guessing, and that’s why she’s here? Why’d you stop?”

“Because she seemed a little too interested in complaining about you,” Peter says distractedly. He’s looking right at Stiles, but is acting as if he’s staring at something completely unrecognizable. “I just want to know what _happened_ to me, I don’t want to go after you. I—why on earth aren’t you angry at me?”

“Because it _does_ make sense. I mean, if I were you and pissed off at me, I’d probably do that too,” Stiles says. Then he grimaces and has to add an amendment. “Well, but I wouldn’t have done that to _Lydia_. I know you don’t know her, but she’s—we’re actually sort of non-enemies, but I definitely would _not_ tell her anything important. Especially since now I’m pretty sure she thinks we deliberately suckered her down to where the Argents roam. She’s got bad blood with Gerard.”

“Her and apparently half the supernatural world,” Peter suddenly snaps. “What is it with you people and wanting to _murder_ everything? I’m no saint, I’ll admit, but that isn’t my sole goal in life.”

Stiles starts to say that that’s not really true and then he just…kind of can’t. It’s not the truth, but on the other hand, Peter thinking it’s the truth does make sense, given what the man’s seen. It’s not like Stiles can really offer much of a counterpoint.

Things you can’t fix, he thinks, and then happens to look over and catches Talia walking over to them. She and he both freeze. Then, with a glance that’s a lot warier than the one she gave him, she looks at Peter. When he heaves a sigh, she resumes walking.

“How are you?” she asks him.

Peter lets out an incredulous snort and starts to say something sarcastic, only to let it die out before he finishes the first word. He looks at Talia, one hand going up to massage his shoulder—her eyes flick there and her jaw tightens, but she doesn’t say anything—and then he sighs again. “Same,” he says. He looks past her, then offers a crooked smile. “And the town seems to just…keep on as it is. They’re already going back to their pork sandwiches and gossiping about us, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, but Cora’s doing a pretty good job of making up a story about me and my alleged ex-girlfriend, and her shady bodyguards,” Stiles says. Then he sees how Talia and Peter are looking at him and taps one ear. “My—”

“No, I remember, but _bodyguards_?” Talia says incredulously. “They’re barely old enough to drive. Who on earth is going to buy that?”

“They’re gonna if Cora spins them a sordid tale of Rodeo Drive love and betrayal and cut-price hooligans exported from Russia…okay, that’s stretching it,” Stiles says, frowning. “No gang tats and there is no way those two could make it through a tattooing session without breaking down into tears.”

Peter and Talia share a look of mingled amusement and mild disappointment. Then they both—not quite flinch, but it’s an awkward, sharp movement along a recent fracture line. They don’t smell mad at each other, they just smell…unsure. Talia purses her lips and Peter rubs at his shoulder. Then he lifts his hand at the same time she takes a half-step towards him.

“I think it’s under control here,” she says after another second. She hesitates. “John and Melissa said they’d deal with it.”

“And are you going to allow that?” Peter asks, half-skeptical, half-knowing. He tilts his head, and then suddenly turns. “I think I need to go—”

“If your shoulder’s bothering you again, you should go home,” Talia says. “We’re almost at the speeches anyway, and you hate those. I can make your excuses.”

He wants to take the offer. At the same time, he’s reluctant and suddenly Stiles realizes what’s been nagging him about this whole situation—how familiar it is. This is exactly how Scott acts when his mom tells him not to worry about something, and they both know it is something to worry about and she’s going to handle it. Peter doesn’t spout stuff about who else is going to get hurt, but he’s got the same concerned look in his eyes. And Talia’s covering up her worry the same way Melissa does, standing like the rest of the world can just shatter itself against her—but the rest of the world isn’t what she’s trying to hold together.

“I can get somebody to drive him,” Stiles says. Briefly regrets it, when they both turn towards him—he can deal with intense but the way they’re looking at him is definitely making him prove it. But…again, things that can’t be fixed, and what you have to do when that happens. “Look, I know Lydia and the ice-queen act aside, she doesn’t throw her pack into fights she can’t win. We’re gonna talk her down, it’s just going to take a while. So…you don’t have to do anything. I mean, look, if you want to watch, you can do that too but…I mean it when I say it’ll be a while. I’m not trying to hide anything here.”

Talia considers this, and then glances back at where Stiles’ dad is standing. “How many other people did she bring?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Stiles says. “but I don’t think she’s here to declare war, she’s not really that type.”

“Well, that’s certainly not the impression I got,” Peter says archly, and Stiles prepares himself for another round of accusations about how he’s not being straight with them. But then Peter digs into his pocket and pulls out a set of car keys. He jingles them as he and Talia look at each other, smelling tense, and then he holds them out. “On the other hand, she _does_ give me the impression that she prefers fools for company, and she obviously doesn’t have perfect control over them. Here.”

To Stiles. He’s trying to give the keys to…Stiles checks, but nope, Talia isn’t remotely at the right angle to take them. And Talia’s actually stepping back; she’s putting one arm around herself, not exactly comfortable with this, but she’s letting it happen.

“Or have you changed your mind about letting me die?” Peter says, sounding irritated.

“Look, Lydia’s not going to kill you. Or make you work for her, whatever she was saying back there, she probably just…” Stiles waves one hand around, hoping to summon up better words “…honestly, that was probably just to piss me off.”

“Of course it was. And of course, now that you’ve defended me, she’s going to let that go,” Peter says acidly.

That…is a valid point, and Stiles just gives up and takes the keys. “Okay, fine. So where do you live now, exactly?”

* * *

Peter lives downtown in a doorman building with enough security cameras that Stiles wishes he’d thought to bring sunglasses. As it is, he has to keep his head and shoulders so hunched over to avoid any eye-glare getting taped that he nearly runs into three corners, because werewolf, not were-bat.

“You don’t have charms for that?” Peter says, once they’re in his apartment and Stiles explains the posture changes.

“Yeah, I do, but I don’t carry them everywhere with me. It takes head-on light to trigger it, and most places don’t have the Tiffany jewelbox look this place does,” Stiles says.

Surprisingly, Peter makes a face. “It’s not my style either, but the security system was a selling point,” he mutters. 

He pauses and they stare at each other. Then, adding something about water in the kitchen and Netflix, Peter abruptly turns and walks out of the living area. He goes into the bathroom and shuts the door, and Stiles…tries to figure out what to do now. 

The apartment itself isn’t nearly as glittery as the common spaces, with still-bare walls and minimal furniture. What is around is more mid-modern in style, and all hardwoods and leather with the odd chrome accent. Stiles wanders into the kitchen, then back out again, catching up on his texts, idly noting that the smell of whoever had helped Peter move hasn’t yet faded.

Lydia and her brace of alpha lackeys are staying in a hotel by the hospital, which is at least far away, even if Stiles isn’t really big on her being that close to a recent magical breach. Scott says he and his mom are going to try and have dinner with her, because apparently Lydia is, in fact, legitimately looking into something besides the Argents. He also says that the Argents are fine, aside from Allison’s dad seeming depressed about meeting yet another person Gerard fucked over, and that Stiles doesn’t need to come back but maybe shouldn’t leave Peter alone yet. Which means Lydia’s still not explaining exactly what she’s doing here.

Stiles still doesn’t think she’s going to go up against them, especially now that Melissa seems back to firing on all cylinders, but…and then he remembers something. “Peter?” he calls, walking up to the bathroom door.

There’s a sharp scuffle inside. Then, just as Stiles is rethinking this, the door abruptly opens. “What happened?” Peter demands.

He’s got his shirt off because Stiles apparently caught him in the middle of trying to wrap an icepack to his shoulder with some gauze. For a lawyer, he’s got nicely-defined pecs, and the belly musculature is nice, too. “Nothing,” Stiles says, blinking. “Just wondering how you got Lydia to think there used to be a Nemeton here. I mean, whatever you found that term in, can I look at it? And I’m not doing this to be pissy or to talk about how you don’t know magic, it’s just if we’re going to get Lydia to leave, then it’d help for me to know what she—”

“Because she said that’s what it was,” Peter says, frowning. He withdraws slightly, then pushes forward. He pauses on the threshold till Stiles backs up, then walks out and further down the hall to the bedroom. Then he comes back out with a folder of papers in his hand. “I sent her these photos of what we found while they were filling in the hole where Rafael McCall’s body was, and that was her reaction.”

Stiles takes the folder and flips it open. Then swears. He snaps the folder shut and twists around and jogs back to the living room before he remembers that his phone is actually _on_ him—Peter gave it back when they were in the car—and pulls it out to call his dad.

 _“Yeah, Lydia already told me, I have Jordan out there right now, and Melissa and I are going later tonight to help,”_ his dad says. _“It’s fine, Stiles.”_

“It is totally not fine. It is the complete opposite of fine, Dad, I—how did I miss a _Nemeton_ root?” Stiles hisses. “I didn’t take that into account, no wonder he was having nightmares, and you know what, the size of this thing when it was up, Melissa and Scott probably—”

 _“It wasn’t that, Stiles. I checked the spellwork too and even if you didn’t specifically think of it, between you and Alan and Marin, you would have still covered it,”_ his dad says, more than a hint of exasperation in his voice. _“It’s clearly been dead since before Rafael got buried there, it wouldn’t have really done any—it’s not the magic, all right? It has nothing to do with magic, it’s just we had a goddamn shitstorm hit us and you don’t go through one of those without getting stains. We just—we got fucked-up, Stiles. That’s all there is. So—so stop. Just…just stop. Please.”_

“But I—” And then Stiles folds his legs under himself, and flops down on the floor, and stares at the carpet. Because he knew that. He knew that before his dad had said it, he’s always known it, and he just…had been hoping like an idiot anyway, because hoping is easier than dealing with reality. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry.”

His father exhales. This is just one more thing the poor man has to deal with, and Stiles is sorry about that too, but can’t quite get out the words. _“Son, it’s already over,”_ his dad says quietly. _“You need to take a break. Just…take a break, all right? I’ll be over in the morning.”_

“Okay.” Stiles breathes in, and tells himself to at least stop bugging his dad. “Yeah. Okay.”

 _“All right,”_ his dad says one more time. There’s a couple seconds of just breathing, and then the call ends.

Stiles lowers the phone from his ear. Looks at it. He’s got more texts, and he moves his thumb, but…doesn’t unlock the phone to read them. He just looks at the push notifications crowding up his screen.

And eventually he looks up, when his neck starts to cramp. Peter’s standing there, watching him, a fresh buttondown thrown over his shoulders. He sucks his breath as Stiles starts, moves as if he’s going to walk around, and then stays put. 

“What do you want to eat?” Peter asks. “I’m going to order in some Thai.”

“Didn’t we just…barbecue?” Stiles says. Okay, he hadn’t grabbed anything before Peter tracked him down, but he’d shown up an hour and a half in, so he’d assumed Peter had stuffed himself.

“I didn’t have anything.” Peter turns away, starting to button up his shirt, and walks into the kitchen. “Appetite wasn’t…but might as well now, since there’s nothing else to do.”

Stiles continues to sit on the floor. There are tapping sounds from the kitchen, and then Peter comes back out with a laptop under his arm. He looks oddly at Stiles, but doesn’t say anything, just goes around Stiles to seat himself on the couch. He sets up the laptop on the coffee table in front of him, and then does stuff on it for the next fifteen minutes. At that point, the food shows up and Stiles gets up to take the bag so Peter can pay the delivery guy. 

There’s a dining table, but after a moment’s thought, Stiles spreads the food out on the coffee table. Peter looks it over, then sits back where he’d been, while Stiles kneels by the other side of the table. They eat in silence; the Thai is pretty good, and now that Stiles is thinking about it, he is hungry. Peter does not smell particularly enthusiastic about the food, but he also downs a decent amount of noodles before he pushes away his chopsticks and goes back to the laptop.

“You’re not still pretending to be me, are you?” Stiles finally has to ask.

“No,” Peter snorts. He looks up, his mouth flexing tensely at the corners, and then his expression settles on cautiously amused. “Not my finest moment, but in my defense, I was frustrated. There is an asinine amount of misinformation about the supernatural on the Internet.”

“Well, yeah, best camouflage ever,” Stiles points out. He drinks some milk tea (Peter ordered two, so apparently he’s got a sweet tooth). “Also, dropping my name’s not the worst way to get real responses about magic.”

“As I’ve learned,” Peter says dryly. He taps at the keyboard. “Although if I had been thinking, I would have gone with your father instead. I wanted people to take me seriously.”

Stiles hears his jaw hinge click as his mouth drops open. It’s a good ten seconds before he can move his jaw back up. “Excuse me? People do too take me seriously!”

“Seriously enough to come down here and threaten your associates in broad daylight,” Peter says. “Somehow I don’t think your father would have provoked the same reaction.”

“I—well, no, not exactly the same, but earlier today was an outlier,” Stiles has to admit, though he’s still sore. He might have had a shitshow of a last couple months, per his dad, but he’s worked _hard_ for his reputation in the field. And he has one, and it does, in fact, carry weight so long as you aren’t Lydia Martin. “Also, way to coopt the situation there.”

Peter looks up sharply. He does not like that, and the fragile calm that’d started to come up between them goes away. But…he doesn’t get upset either. 

“What is an Emissary?” he finally asks.

“It’s a…title,” Stiles says. Then sees Peter’s expression start to change, and half of him wants to be frustrated and the other half just wants to lie down and sleep through the latest cycle of this fight. “I mean, it’s a magic-worker, but not always a druid, it doesn’t have to be—an Emissary’s a pack member who isn’t a werewolf, and who’s the designated magic-worker.”

“But werewolves obviously can perform magic themselves,” Peter says, frowning.

“Yeah, but a lot of them don’t want to learn, or just think it’s easier to get in a magic-worker. Way back in the day it was more formalized, because new werewolves tend to get themselves killed before they can learn the ropes, and a magic-worker could come and help them through the transition period,” Stiles explains. He finishes up his bubble tea and then starts to bag up the trash, out of lack of anything else to occupy his hands. “There was kind of a system. And Emissaries are kind of like ambassadors too, because they often outlive packs and so there’s this custom of not killing them because who knows, they might end up in yours down the line. But a pack doesn’t have to have one. Lydia doesn’t actually have one, and never has, so far as I know. She wouldn’t want the competition.”

Peter is interested enough that he puts his hand on the top of his laptop and starts to push it down. “So she’s like you?”

“As in…she does magic, yeah,” Stiles says. He pauses, because he was telling the truth about being non-enemies with her and he doesn’t normally out people. Then again, he thinks, she could have just texted him about the goddamn Nemeton. Or what Peter was doing online. “But not as in she’s a werewolf, because she’s not.”

“But they called her their alpha,” Peter says immediately.

“Yeah, because she is. But she’s not an alpha _werewolf_ ,” Stiles says. “She’s a banshee who likes ordering werewolves around.” 

“A banshee,” Peter says, clearly taking notes in his head. “But then…why isn’t she also considered the pack Emissary? If she’s a magic-worker and a non-werewolf, then that seems to fit the definition.”

Stiles is glad he doesn’t have any more bubble tea, because as is, he has to duck his head fast to avoid spitting in Peter’s face. He coughs sharply into his fist instead, and has to take a moment to compose himself. “Okay, so Lydia is absolutely not an Emissary, because like I said, they’re kind of diplomatic types and Lydia is…Lydia’s an alpha. I’m not trying to be sarcastic, it’s just…a little hard to explain. Honestly, I’m not usually the one who does the intro conversations for people who work for us.”

And there goes Peter’s back stiffening up again. “For the record, I am not, and have never, been interested in working _for_ a pack. David Whittemore may have seen some value in it, but I don’t.”

“Well, one, he didn’t work for a pack, because Rafael was an omega at that point, and two, he died really horribly so I wouldn’t copy him either,” Stiles says, unable to help a little sarcasm. Then he reins himself in—he tries to, anyway. He was actually starting to like the conversation, but the constant emotional whiplash is just exhausting. “Nobody’s asking you to be an Emissary, okay? Lydia’s not, I’m not, I don’t think Dad or Melissa have—our pack doesn’t have one, and I don’t think we need one. We’re fine the way we are.”

“Are you?” Peter says, brows rising.

Stiles draws back, just over the sniping, and Peter drops his gaze. His shoulders hunch a little and then he looks back up. He seems like he regrets it, but he doesn’t actually say anything. He does reach out and grab the last few napkins, when Stiles finally just gets up with the trash bag, and he follows Stiles into the kitchen. 

They go back to the silent routine as they clean up. Peter speaks once, to let Stiles know the couch folds out, and then he takes his laptop and goes into the bedroom. Shuts the door behind him, not that Stiles can’t track him by sound.

Though in the end, Stiles just gets out the couch-bed and curls up on it. There’s nothing else he wants to do, and he…doesn’t know what he needs to do, so he just thinks he’ll lie there and see if something comes to him, and ends up falling asleep.

* * *

What wakes Stiles isn’t Peter’s hoarse shout, but the repeated fuzzy twang of the springs in Peter’s mattress as the man thrashes against it. So he’s at Peter’s door, half-awake, fingering clumsily through his string of charms when the yell sends him belly-flat against the floor, crouched and ready for whatever is about to come charging through the door.

Nothing does. The bedsprings stop creaking and for one minute, and then another, there’s only the sound of harsh, quick breathing. Then a longer, slower inhale and exhale. Some minor sheet-rustling and one series of metallic twinges as Peter shifts a limb, probably a leg. More breathing, an abrupt muffled crunch—punch into the bed—and then Peter crawls off the bed, grunting and mumbling to himself. He walks one way, then the other. Then finally comes towards the door, just as Stiles’ own consciousness pulls itself together enough to realize that Peter probably isn’t going to want to see a red-glowy-eyed, hairy-eared shadow-thing right outside his bedroom.

The door swings open just after Stiles has shifted human but before Stiles can push himself totally to his feet. Stiles freezes and checks Peter’s hands first—empty—and then stands up, only to find Peter staring at his…he twists his hand back, then grimaces and makes a half-hearted attempt to put his charms away. 

“I wasn’t actually casting, just so you know,” he says. “They’re just kind of like a security blanket. Well, I mean, they work too, just I wasn’t using them.”

Peter looks confused, in the way that people do when they’re still not fully aware of the waking world. He runs one hand over his face and back into his hair, and then pivots like he might go back into the bedroom. Then drops the hand and leans against the jamb, looking at where the chain is dangling out of Stiles’ pocket. “Can you use magic for that?”

“Um, actually, no, these are…” Stiles pulls the charms back out and holds them up “…this is for demons, and that’s ghosts, and—”

“I meant in general,” Peter says, frowning. “You—did draw some things around the house. And my office building. I looked them up, they’re partly about dreaming.”

“Oh… _oh_ …no,” Stiles says, smelling Peter’s disappointment. “Not in the way I think you mean. Those are—they keep things from getting into your dreams, because that can be a potential vector. But they don’t…they don’t do anything about the dreams themselves. I can’t—I mean, that would take getting _into_ your head, and isn’t that the last thing you’d want me to do?”

Peter presses his lips together, then suddenly pushes out of the doorway and past Stiles. “Then again, migraines and hammer,” he mutters.

That doesn’t exactly make sense, but it also doesn’t sound great, so Stiles ends up following the other man down the short hall and back to the kitchen. “Okay, so…self-harm is probably not the way to go here, especially when you’ve got a direct line to the hospital pharmacy. I mean, not that I’m advocating opioid addiction either, and anyway, opioids are contraindicated for—”

“I’m not _actually_ going to crack open my own skull, Stiles,” Peter tells him, banging open the fridge and cabinets to assemble a glass of water. “It’s just an analogy.”

“To…oh, to how migraine sufferers sometimes—got it, following now,” Stiles says. Then regrets it when Peter abruptly slews around and stares hard at him, as if now Stiles owes him a full explanation of everything that’s ever happened in his life up to tonight. “I mean…”

Eventually, the other man turns away. He puts his filtering pitcher on the counter, then lifts his glass. Then puts it down on the counter next to the pitcher, staring at it. His shirt is slightly slack on one side, and Stiles gradually realizes that the icepack that had been stretching it out is gone.

“So, um…Scott said he wouldn’t mind talking to you,” Stiles finally says. Then looks away when Peter tries to look up at him. He tries to find something distracting in the kitchen. “You know. Since he…had similar…um…and it is his dad. Was.”

“So magic doesn’t solve everything,” Peter says.

Stiles makes a face at the stove. It’s so shiny, the few greasy odors coming off it so industrial, that he’s not sure it’s ever been used. “No, sorry. We’re, well, we’re supernatural. We’re not _not_ human.”

“I suppose there goes my plan to achieve alien invincibility,” Peter says, with enough humor—even dark and brittle—that Stiles feels okay looking at him again. The other man picks his glass back up and takes a long drink from it, then exhales as he wipes off his mouth with the back of his hand. “You can tell your friend the offer is declined. Appreciated, but declined…I don’t think I want to know any more about his father than I already do. And despite the town gossip, I don’t generally seek out other people’s suffering.”

“Strictly quid pro quo basis?” Stiles guesses.

Peter shrugs, his mouth almost quirking at the right side. “Well, if you open the door…” his expression sobers “…which I now realize has other applications. Unfortunately.”

“Sorry,” Stiles mutters. He finds himself poking at the edge of the marble island that cuts the kitchen off from the living area. “I…yeah. Um…”

“I don’t actually blame you for that,” Peter says. He sounds a little surprised, and when Stiles looks up, Peter appears to be trying to still find the end of that thought. “Realistically, things could never be that easy or simple, and…it’s not as if this hasn’t happened before. All things pass, one way or the other, and there were other ways even before I learned magic is real.”

“You’ve gotten possessed before?” Stiles asks, confused.

“No, of course not, I meant—the consequences,” Peter says. He’s irritated, and then he’s just tired again. “The damn dreams—they came up after Talia—and he deserved it too, just as much. What I just never understand is _why_ the dreams, when I’m positive I don’t have a single regret about their fate anywhere in my consciousness.”

“Well, maybe they’re coming out of something besides guilt?” Stiles says after a moment. “Like fear? Because it might happen again?”

Peter makes a face and drinks more water. “Between you and your pack—yes, I acknowledge your skills, that was never really the issue either—I don’t think that’s realistically possible. I’m an amateur at this but even with what I’ve found out so far—I know that.”

“Sure, you know it, but that doesn’t mean you’ve internalized it,” Stiles points out.

“And now you sound like my therapist,” Peter mutters, rolling his eyes.

Stiles stares at him. “You…mean like _not_ a physical therapist. So you talk about this to—”

“Oh, good God, I don’t discuss it as if it’s literal reality. I tell her it’s symbolic and also my sister’s recently gotten me addicted to a trashy werewolves versus vampires urban fantasy series,” Peter snorts. He drains the last of his water, throat flexing enough that Stiles has to push back a misplaced flash of interest, and then turns around to deposit the glass in the sink. “Which is clearly coloring things.”

“And she buys that Talia likes that kind of thing?” Stiles asks.

Peter turns back, looking mildly impressed at Stiles’ insight. “She’s new to town. My old one, unfortunately, retired a few years ago.”

“Oh,” Stiles says.

Carefully, he’d thought, but apparently not enough so, since Peter’s gaze sharpens. “Unlike my sister, I’ve never actually thought it was healthy to keep everything completely within the family,” Peter says after a moment. “Obviously, you don’t go around begging for friendship like my niece tends to, but there’s no _need_ for friendship. There’s a reason why services like psychology are organized as professions and not personal relationships.”

“Hey, I’m not judging here, I’m just…interested. Objectively. It’s not exactly an option over on this side,” Stiles says, raising his hands. “Except for druids, but then that means you owe them favors, and that’s just a multigenerational can of worms. So whatever gets you to sleep at night.”

“Right,” Peter says, snorting. He pushes himself sharply back from the island, frustration rolling off every inch of him, and then stops. Stares off to the side before he finally slumps back against the far counter, his burst of energy fading. “Right.”

A minute passes, and then another. Peter doesn’t seem like he’s interested in trying to go back to bed, but he also doesn’t start up any more conversation. But whenever Stiles moves, he twitches and glances over, like he actually doesn’t want Stiles to go, and Stiles…has nothing else. So it shouldn’t be a big deal, except for how increasingly awkward it feels.

“What do you do with Scott?” Peter suddenly asks.

“Scott?” Stiles says, blinking. “What do you mean, what do we do with—you mean, when he has nightmares?”

Peter nods.

“Um—well, he’s a werewolf,” Stiles starts. Then grimaces and lifts his hand, before Peter can call him on hiding behind their supernaturalness again. Because that’s honestly not what he’s trying to do, he just doesn’t usually have these types of conversations under these conditions (and yeah, it’s sad that having the distraction of an ongoing fight works better for Stiles, thanks but no thanks for the pity). “So he…there’s a werewolf thing, because we can hear really well, right? So heartbeats—you listen for someone else’s, so long as they’re calmer, and then you can use it as an anchor or a guide and sync yours up, and…so, I mean, it works for us.”

“Is that what the bed-sharing is about?” Peter says after a second. He watches Stiles’ expression and a little embarrassment filters into his scent. “Derek said something, which was probably grossly exaggerated, knowing him—”

“Well, kind of. Sometimes. Body pressure helps too. It’s not _sex_ —so sometimes that happens, but that’s just like a…tangent, not the actual thing we’re trying to do,” Stiles says. “We’re kind of a different social-moral structure, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter says. He’s amused but also tense at the same time; his eyes keep flicking behind Stiles, so that even though every sense Stiles has is telling him there’s nothing there, Stiles is having to force himself to not turn. Then Peter’s eyes return to his face and Peter’s scent really surges with nerves. “All right. Though you are aware of the differences…”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure where this is…” Stiles finally turns around.

He looks at the couch-bed, while Peter’s heartbeat skips around, and then back at Peter, who stiffens slightly, a little reddened in the face. Peter seems on the verge of changing the conversation’s direction, but then just clamps his mouth shut.

“Magic doesn’t work,” Stiles says after a moment.

“As you’ve said,” Peter mutters. He takes a tight breath. “I’m also not about to start on mind-altering drugs with this many bodies in the ground. Weaning off the damn painkillers was annoying enough.”

“Um, well…yeah, guess that makes sense.” Stiles looks at the bed again, then takes a few steps towards it.

Peter takes one step. Then nearly backs up, when Stiles glances over his shoulder at him. Stiles starts to ask if Peter really wants to do this, then stops himself and just goes all the way back to the couch. He gets on it, automatically sprawling on his back like he usually does, and then rolls over as he hears Peter’s tentative steps approaching. This is going to be deeply weird, he thinks, and then he shrugs it off and bunches himself up near the top of the mattress, on the theory that however desperate Peter is to sleep, the man still probably has no interest in any proximity.

He’s proven right when Peter gets on and promptly sets up camp on the opposite corner, despite being obviously uncomfortable. Peter’s shoulder is giving him trouble and after a couple seconds, Stiles pushes over an extra pillow. Which Peter takes, but he also starts smelling even more upset and that’s not exactly going to help their goal here, so Stiles…decides to pretend to ignore the guy. So he curls up around his one pillow, flips the sheet over his legs, and closes his eyes.

Peter lets out a little incredulous noise and keeps moving around every couple minutes. He gets less restive, but still isn’t just lying still, and even if he had the hearing, he wouldn’t be concentrating hard enough for this to work. Stiles almost tells the guy so, but then just—he remembers seeing a remote on the table by the couch.

He sets up and gets it, ignoring the way Peter jerks and then goes still, and turns on the TV. It’s not set to cable so he hears the zap but then there isn’t any other noise besides the TV’s internal hum—somebody probably has to flip it to Netflix or whatever. Which Stiles doesn’t want to spend time thinking about, so he just tosses the remote in Peter’s direction and curls back down.

Five minutes. Peter picks up the remote. Two minutes. He picks a nature documentary. David Attenborough’s mellifluous accent makes Stiles snort, which in turn makes Peter twitch, and Stiles…stifles his sigh in his pillow. Just let the man try, he tells himself. It’s not like this kind of experiment is going to hurt anybody else, and Stiles, again, has nothing.

He falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I pointed this out in another endnote somewhere, but the whole idea of an Emissary doesn't really make sense as presented in the show. Werewolves can use magic themselves, and they don't need to 'anchor' themselves to another person. If you're paranoid about outsiders finding out about you, it seems counter-intuitive to make yourself so heavily dependent on somebody who's got enough magic to not be intimidated by you, and if most werewolves are actually bitten (since the Hales don't seem to be typical), then it's really unlikely you'll already know a druid before becoming a werewolf. I also don't see a ton of benefits for the druids either, aside from potential groupie/power-behind-the-throne psychological issues. So this is me trying to come up with yet another explanation for it (although honestly, you add in Peter's season-one Spike Lite outfit and I personally think somebody was just cribbing notes from _Buffy_ again).


	6. Chapter 6

Several hours later, around five in the morning, Stiles wakes up again and surprisingly, Peter is in fact deeply asleep. In calm sleep, even, judging from his heartbeat. He’s maybe three inches closer, meaning there’s still a ton of empty space between them that Stiles can use to get off the mattress without even tugging at the sheets.

What woke Stiles up this time is his phone buzzing (the TV’s off again). He gets off the couch first, then remembers his phone’s in his pocket, so by the time he gets it out, he’s missed his father’s call. Stiles grimaces at it and is about to call the man back when he gets a text instead, telling him that they’ve finished re-excavating the Hales’ backyard to make sure all the Nemeton root bits have been found. They turned up one more, so now his dad’s trying to get Marin and Alan back to get rid of the things.

Totally the wrong call, Stiles thinks, and he heads out of Peter’s apartment and up one level to the roof (because sure, short notice and distractions but Peter’s still going to grab the penthouse) where he can deploy the appropriate volume of voice with his father. Except right off the staircase, Stiles gets jumped.

It’s another werewolf, that much he gets before they go crashing through some pots and across the roof. He loses his phone—pretty sure it’s shattered, damn it—and smashes into some kind of furniture, which he immediately grabs and uses to knock off the asshole who’s trying to shove a kneecap through his throat. Then, coughing and spitting, his windpipe painfully reversing its near-collapse, he snaps off a piece of the metal frame and then flips it around in his hand, just in time to shiv it into the guy’s torso as he comes at Stiles again.

He has one second to note the blue eyes before their clash sends them rolling up against the edge of the roof. Claws rip through Stiles’ clothes and into his skin, even after he jerks up on his makeshift dagger, corkscrewing it deeper into the guy. Beta or not, he’s not letting up—his claw slashes across Stiles’ collarbone, way too close to the jugular, and Stiles instinctively hits out with both hands and one knee, sending the other werewolf tumbling over the railing.

Still choking, Stiles scrambles up and looks over the rail. Then curses and shoves himself over it, leaping down onto the balcony to Peter’s apartment.

He gets there a second too late to stop the other werewolf from smashing through the glass doors, only snagging the man’s ankle. “Pe—” Stiles starts to shout.

Then he yelps and ducks, barely flattening himself down as the werewolf’s body suddenly comes hurtling back at him. A limb grazes Stiles. There’s a stuttered clanging noise as the guy hits the metal bar running around the balcony and Stiles twists around, catching his opponent’s eyes just in time to see them widen. The pupils, he realizes. They’re blown way too wide—doctored wolfsbane, that’s where the extra stamina is coming from.

Though then the guy falls over the street-side of the rail, so not like that’s going to help.

Stiles crawls for the rail and gets one hand on it, and then has to stop to catch his breath. His fingers are slippery too—ugh, too much blood. He uses the bars to scrape some off, then grips higher and drags himself up. Just glimpses a crumpled body below in the parking lot, before a sound behind him makes him whip around.

White-faced, Peter starts so sharply that he knocks himself off his feet and has to grab the edge of the couch to steady himself. He’s still way over there, well clear of all the glass fragments on the carpet…the werewolf hadn’t gotten very far into the room before something had tossed him back out. Peter doesn’t have anything in his hands, Stiles can see both of them, and he’s…he looks at something at the top of the balcony doorway and Stiles follows his gaze, just in time for a small cloth bag to fall from where it’d been hidden in the curtains. 

“It worked,” Peter mutters in a shell-shocked voice. “It _worked_.”

“You—what was—” But then Stiles hears a sluggish snarl from below and can’t spare the time.

He twists back around and looks down, and somehow, the asshole who’d attacked him is starting to roll over. He looks around—it’s still so early in the morning that probably everybody’s still sitting up in bed and wondering if they really heard what they thought they heard. If he jumps down really fast and gets the guy over in the alley with the dumpsters, then maybe he can do it fast enough so they only have to worry about three cameras—

Lydia walks up and pulls a gun with a comically large silencer out of it from her dainty little purse, and shoots the guy in the head. She looks up, raises her brows as Stiles gapes at her, and then continues walking into the building as two betas emerge from the shadows of the cars and silently unfold a body bag. 

A phone rings. Then again. Then it cuts off mid-ring on the third round. “Yes?” Peter says, voice overly sharp. He listens for a few seconds, then lets out a disbelieving exhale. Pauses for another second. “Stiles, it’s your father, he says—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I heard, I…” Stiles sinks down against the rail. Rubs at his throat, thinking absently that he sounds worse than that time with the baby kraken. Then he pushes himself up onto his feet. “Okay, if you can get security here to meet him when he gets here, then I’ll…oh. Right.”

“Oh…” Peter takes a couple steps towards the balcony, then stops. He and Stiles look at each other, and then he looks at that little cloth bag on the floor. He still has a thin sheen of sweat over his face, and his color’s not all back to normal.

“Well, yeah, this…happens,” Stiles says. Lamely, he knows. He puts one hand on the balcony rail and starts to pull himself up onto it. “Sorry. Look, I’ll just—”

“Are you—don’t jump off that, are you insane?” Peter hisses, suddenly rushing forward. He jerks to a stop again, just short of where the broken glass starts, and then he looks around. He finds a chair and turns it over, pushing the glass aside till he can get the bag, and then he uses the chair back to scoop it up and move it over. “Besides, you’re covered in blood. Get in here and wipe that off before you leave a streak down the entire side of the building. I’ll pay to get the carpet torn up but I’m not paying for power-washing everyone else’s windows.”

Stiles opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then he walks up to the edge of the doorway. Peter’s still bent over, dragging the chair back, but Stiles can see how the man’s shoulders tense up. There’s a second when Peter stops and seems about to…but then he keeps pulling the chair, with the bag on it, away. And when Stiles lifts his foot and gives it a tentative swing over the threshold, nothing happens. Not even a tingle.

He walks back into the room. Peter lets go of the chair and stares at him, then abruptly turns away, saying he’ll get Stiles a towel. Okay, Stiles thinks. So they’re going to do it this way. 

* * *

“Of course I wasn’t going to tell you, Stiles,” Lydia says, rolling her eyes as she swipes at her phone. “You weren’t even supposed to be involved. The entire point was that we wanted to take them before your pack got around to them.”

“Okay, and yet…” Stiles says, looking pointedly at where Derek and one of Lydia’s betas are taping plastic over the gaping hole in Peter’s balcony doors.

Lydia finally deigns to lift her eyes from her phone. “Yes, yes, we missed one. I’ll be having words within the pack about that.”

“Yeah, I know you will. And I’m guessing you’ll also be having words about barging into town and throwing down with me in front of everybody, just so we all got out of the way for your little revenge drive?” Stiles says acidly. Somebody coughs behind him and he whips around to glower, only to have Tara silently hand him a piece of paper. He grimaces—she’s right up there with his dad on the list of people who take way more shit than they have to—and looks down at her diagram of the security camera layout, then circles the ones where they should be putting the charms and hands it back to her. “You know, instead of, I don’t know, calling ahead and going, hey, so these guys who’re picking a bone with Gerard Argent’s legacy? They kind of beat up a good friend of mine so can I have first dibs on mauling them?”

“Because you’re so good about keeping out of other people’s business,” Lydia says. She glances at Tara as the other woman walks by, then locks eyes with a passing beta. One chin-jerk and the beta is grabbing Tara’s duffel bag for her and walking her out the door. “Besides, I was curious about this new Emissary of yours.”

Stiles exhales irritably. “I keep telling you, he’s not an Emissary, and he and his entire family are off-limits and that isn’t even me, that’s _Scott_ and _Melissa_ and do you want me to call them? Do you really want me to call Melissa, Lydia?”

“Oh, don’t threaten me, Stiles. You’re the one who failed to notice a half-dozen homicidal Canadians in your local park,” Lydia says. She purses her lips and whistles sharply; her other beta’s head goes up and then he obediently trots over, leaving Derek to curse and hastily staple the last corner of the plastic in place before it falls. Lackey gathered, she turns on her heel. “Honestly, you should be thanking me for cleaning up for you. Your standards have slipped horribly, you know. Maybe you _should_ get an Emissary, if you need that much help.”

Then she walks out, which is a good thing because Stiles really would rather not wreck Peter’s place even more, but he still needs a good two minutes to get his breathing under control. He’s pretty sure he’s showing, and that’s confirmed when Tara hobbles by the hallway door, glances in, and then points at her eyes. Stiles gives her a tight nod and she pauses, clearly not sure about just leaving him. But then her phone rings and it’s his dad’s voice on the line when she answers it, so she just sighs and points in the direction that Lydia had gone, then at herself. Which is again, not fair on her, but before Stiles can disagree, Derek walks up to him.

“So you’re friends with her?” Derek asks.

“No, we’re non-enemies,” Stiles grits out. He turns back, but Tara’s gone, and he just…he exhales carefully. Closes his eyes till he’s sure that they won’t be red, and then opens them. “I’m kind of rethinking that.”

“Seriously?” Derek says. “Just kind of?”

He came over with Tara, since she’s still having trouble driving and all of the other deputies are out in the preserve, helping Stiles’ dad with whatever the rest of Lydia’s pack did last night. Stiles assumes he’s also over to check on Peter, though Peter’s been locked up in the bedroom on calls with Talia and Melissa and building management for the last hour. Honestly, Stiles isn’t sure why Derek is still here.

“She can be a lot worse. This actually is her being nice,” Stiles finally says. “So if you want the truth, no, I’m not. Lydia’s better on our side than not. But that’s why I’m saying non-enemy status, because whatever you think, I do actually know when I’m being an asshole.”

“I wasn’t saying I didn’t get the difference,” Derek says, blinking, like Stiles actually should have expected this reaction from him, given what he’d said immediately before. “I’m just saying, what she said at the end—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, I’m going to—I’m on that,” Stiles mutters. He’s trying not to grimace too obviously, in case he slips and shifts his ears or something. “I know your family doesn’t think we know what we’re doing, but—”

“I was going to say that that’s a bunch of bullshit considering she’s the one who came in knowing where they all were and what they were after, and she still missed one,” Derek interrupts. He pauses, more wary than satisfied when Stiles doesn’t react, and then shrugs aggressively. “So maybe I’m just not following all the supernatural stuff, but that’s what I thought happened.”

Stiles looks more closely at him. His heartbeat’s steady, his smell is mostly irritation but it’s leveled out and not still rising, and his tone is conversational under the bite. “No, that’s pretty much what did happen.”

“So why are you staring at me?” Derek says. “I can’t get things right once in a while?”

“I can’t figure out your issues for you all the time, Derek,” Stiles says, and then remembers they’re also supposed to be non-enemies these days. “But mostly, it’s because I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I don’t, and I don’t know why you’re even bringing that up,” Derek says, looking annoyed. “She’s blaming you for not handling something she didn’t bother to tell you about, and Scott said they were trying to put you on a break so you wouldn’t burn out, so it’s not like it was your job to be looking out for that kind of stuff. That doesn’t have anything to do with whether I like you.”

“No, you’re right,” Stiles says. He’s grinning. He knows it’s creeping Derek out, and he should stop, but he can’t help himself sometimes. “I gotta say, I think right now, in this moment, this might be the most I ever like you.”

Derek scowls. Under that, he smells freaked out. “I really don’t want you to like me.”

And just like that…it’s awkward enough that Stiles can’t smile anymore, and he also can’t say anybody got him into that one but him. He just…fucked up. He does that.

“Look,” Derek says after a moment. “I—”

“I’m sorry about messing with you,” Stiles says.

Derek stops and looks sharply at him. “Are you?” he finally asks, much less aggressively than Stiles would have expected.

“I…am sorry that I just took out some things that weren’t really about you, on you,” Stiles clarifies. Slowly, thinking all the time that maybe he shouldn’t be putting this out there, but at the same time, if Derek is smart enough to really ask the question…maybe that’s what he owes the guy. Who hasn’t tried to get back at Stiles, not even through Scott. “I am not sorry about trying to scare you away from us—I know, Scott likes you, I’m not going to mess with that unless and until he says, but he wasn’t in a good place for just fucking around. And I’m not sorry about dragging you to the golf course either. I was gonna do what I needed to, to stop Scott from being an idiot. But that other thing—yeah. I shouldn’t have done that.”

The other man listens to all of that, with more attentiveness and less overt hostility than Stiles honestly would have allowed him, but his body language still says they’re not going to hug it out at the end. He does give Stiles a nod, when it’s clear Stiles isn’t going to say more, but that seems to be where Derek wants to leave it.

“I’m not just fucking around with Scott. Neither is Allison,” Derek finally says.

“Yeah, I can see that now,” Stiles says.

Derek presses his lips together, then turns away. He takes his phone out and checks something on it, and Stiles starts to think they’re done. “Look,” he suddenly says, still scowling at his phone. “I don’t like you, but I also don’t actually think you’re fucking with Peter, and I think I’m the one who’d probably know what that looks like. And you did a good job on this, anyway. So just don’t ever fucking come onto me again and I think we won’t kill each other.”

“I…thanks?” Stiles says, blinking. “Glad to have your seal of approval?”

“It’s not that. I don’t think I’m ever going to like you either, but if you’re going to stick around, then at least it looks like you can keep an eye on Peter. You’re okay at that,” Derek says, and then he walks out of the apartment.

Stiles stares after him, bemused. He doesn’t come back—he doesn’t really need to, since per Stiles’ dad, they have things in hand and Stiles is not needed for cover story building, clean up, or defense-shoring. The word ‘grounded’ was thrown around again, and while Stiles still thinks that’s completely ridiculous, he…doesn’t know if he wants to go out again. Or if he should go out again. It’s nice that Derek thinks he’s not at fault here, but he still had to have a werewolf fight on the roof at five in the morning. There’s a lot that’s not right with that.

“I think you’ve won him over,” Peter says from behind Stiles. “That’s high praise from Derek.”

“Again, thanks?” Stiles says, as he turns around. “And…so…”

So this is the time for long stretches of awkward staring, apparently. Peter interrupts it once to put his phone down on a table and move a half-step closer to Stiles, his arm still up as if he’s going to point out something, but he never does. He wants to say something, but if Stiles has any read on his expression, what that is keeps changing. Peter’s clearly not used to being this indecisive, and he gets frustrated with it while Stiles watches.

Speaking of who needs to be here, Stiles probably doesn’t need to be either. Lydia’s presence is fully cleared up and her barbs aside, she’s not going to mess with Peter. Between her pack and Stiles’ pack, only somebody with extinction-level powers is going to be able to crawl through town without getting noticed. And Peter got some sleep in, without nightmares, so he doesn’t have any reason to keep Stiles.

He still comes up with something to say when Stiles moves towards the door. “Nothing to say about unsafe magical practices?”

“What? Oh, you mean the—that was some kind of variation on an invite-only ward, right?” Stiles says. “Smart not to use anything mountain-ash dependent, that’s just too easy for us to figure out, even if you use de-scenter.”

“Which I haven’t used here,” Peter says.

Stiles makes a face. “Yeah, I noticed,” he mutters.

Truce is over, he figures. He turns to go again and Peter clears his throat, so Stiles sighs and turns back. “It was based on vampire lore—alleged vampire lore,” Peter says. “I was actually targeting them, not werewolves—since those seem to be real too. Especially energy vampires.”

“Yeah, they are,” Stiles says, frowning. “Look, are you trying to ask something?”

“Did I do it correctly?” Peter says immediately. Then sucks his breath, looking as if he wishes he hadn’t.

Stiles stares at him as he shifts on his feet, almost moves as if he’s going to find an excuse to leave the room, and then settles on staring right back, his expression pushing hard to get the challenging element through the embarrassment. “Do it…I mean, you exploded the guy all the way off the balcony!” Stiles finally says. “I don’t even know how you did that, and I really do, but—okay, before you even, I’m not going to break back in here and try and start searching through your stuff but I really, really want to know what that was because I’ve never seen that one before.”

“I was trying to keep vampires out of my dreams,” Peter says, more than a little thrown by Stiles’ sudden enthusiasm. He waves one hand in a disjointed way. “I don’t—I’m not sure what I did. I don’t actually want to die in an experiment gone wrong, but I just couldn’t get a damn night’s sleep. I thought at least mentally, it’d help if I knew I had magical barriers up. But I didn’t really think they’d work.”

“Well, they totally did, and it was awesome,” Stiles says.

Peter shuts his mouth and blinks rapidly in surprise. Then he starts to say something again, only for his eyes to widen as he looks down between—Stiles had moved up towards him at some point during the conversation, so they’re only about a foot apart. 

He immediately smells nervous and Stiles moves back, mentally slapping himself. “Sorry,” Stiles says. “But it was cool. And I can…send you some stuff. I’ll email it to you, and if you have questions or want to, um, describe what you did so maybe I can figure out what was the critical change, you can email back. So you don’t actually have to talk to me. If you want.”

“I do want to know what happened,” Peter says slowly. He still looks a little off-kilter, which is probably why he says what he does next. “And I would like to talk to you about it. I liked our little back-and-forths, actually. More than I should have.”

“Yeah, you were always a lot more fun to mess with than Derek,” Stiles blurts out. “Shit. Okay, I—so yeah, I’ll email you.”

Stiles scoots out the door and pulls it shut behind him, then smacks his hand over his face. Presses down, breathes into his palm, and then takes it off so he can look at the floor. 

“What the hell,” he mutters, and then the door behind him opens.

He turns around. Peter stares at him, then pulls the door further open. “Stiles, how old are you?” he asks abruptly.

“Eighteen,” Stiles says. “Why?”

“Really?” Peter says.

Stiles mouths the air a few times. “I just graduated from _high school_.”

“I know that. I’m traumatized, not amnesiac,” Peter snaps. “But you’re a—I don’t know if that changes things.”

“If that—like this is some kind of anti-aging thing, and we’re all really hundreds of years old?” Stiles says incredulously. “Just how much vampire bullshit have you been reading?”

“I’ve only been reading it because I couldn’t get an answer out of you that didn’t involve how I’m not qualified to learn about this, despite having to _live_ it,” Peter retorts, looking contemptuously at Stiles. “Which is an extremely immature attitude, but I see that is, in fact, an intrinsic issue and not just you putting on an act. No wonder you can’t deal with being attracted to me.”

“ _What_?” Stiles stutters.

Peter rolls his eyes. “Are you actually going to deny it?”

“Well— _no_ ,” Stiles says, grabbing the man by the front of his shirt and kissing him.

Because it’s a challenge, and he’s a werewolf, and he’s calling Peter’s bluff except Peter’s shocked lips are slack against his and Stiles lets go of the man and drops back, suddenly realizing how he is _fucking up_. 

“Shit,” he says, and feels his fingers twitch limply at his hips. “Shit. Okay, I—”

Peter, eyes narrowed, the shock and lust in his scent still cut liberally with irritation, puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder and yanks Stiles back into the apartment. Then pushes Stiles up against the door and kisses back.

“Okay,” Stiles mumbles, once his tongue’s done a couple loops around the inside of Peter’s mouth. He kind of has to fight for the breath; Peter’s pretty single-mindedly focused on getting his tongue back to what it was doing, and digs his nails into Stiles’ hips at the delay. “Hey—look, I just—checking—”

“That I know what I’m doing?” Peter says, sighing and pulling back. “I’m over thirty and I’ve already spent ten years of my life trying to manage all the ways one bad night has spiraled into my family’s lives, Stiles. Yes, there’s a lot that’s new to me, but fundamentally, I’m still dealing with people who don’t want to stare their problems in the eye.”

Stiles frowns. Then flexes, just a little, but it sends Peter stumbling back. He curses and reaches for his shoulder—Stiles grimaces; he’d forgotten which one was giving him trouble—and then snaps his head up as Stiles deliberately steps into his space. Sucks his breath when Stiles picks him up at the waist, pivots, and pushes him back against the wall. His toes are still on the ground but Stiles has them level so that inch Stiles has on him no longer matters, and from the way his pulse is racing, that is not a comfort to Peter. Which is the whole point.

“That’s really what you think you’re dealing with?” Stiles says.

Peter swallows hard. His pupils are blown, but it’s not just lust that has them that way, and he takes a good, long second to answer. “Yes,” he says. 

His eyes flick over Stiles’ face, and then he lifts his hand and puts it on the side of Stiles’ throat. Stiles instinctively snarls and Peter’s fingers twitch off—Peter wasn’t expecting that, it’s not a dominance move—but then he takes a deep breath and puts them back, and Stiles suddenly realizes what he’s really trying to do: feel Stiles’ pulse.

“Try lying to me now,” he says.

Stiles forces his fangs back, and his lips down till they’re pressed against each other. “I could, actually,” he says. “That only works on new werewolves. Older ones learn how to control their heartbeats.”

“Oh,” Peter says. He’s taken aback, for a moment, and then he thinks of something else. “Well, then—”

“Okay, look, you’re right. But—you can see the problems, right? So do you still want to get involved?” Stiles says. “Because you do actually have a choice—”

“I have a choice about whether I deal with this or whether I try to live like a blind fool,” Peter says. “I’d rather find out how I can make people bounce off my balcony on purpose. Does that answer your question?”

Yeah, but…Stiles kind of can’t believe it. So he opens his mouth but doesn’t immediately say anything. But Peter reads his face, rolls his eyes, and suddenly curls his hand across Stiles’ nape as he drags them together for another kiss. 

Startled, Stiles steps back without remembering he’s still got Peter by the waist, so Peter ends up coming in pretty hard. He grunts as their teeth click, then pulls up against Stiles, wrapping his arms around Stiles’ shoulders as he bears down anyway, sucking at Stiles’ lower lip till Stiles opens up the kiss. Stiles gropes around for a better handhold as they list dangerously from side-to-side, but every time he starts to settle his hand on Peter’s thigh or ass or back, Peter squirms. And then he has to just grab on and squeeze as Peter pulls off his mouth and licks at his jawline instead, licks with teeth scraping behind like the man’s been watching werewolf pornos, and belatedly, he realizes Peter hasn’t been wiggling around because the guy’s _uncomfortable_.

“Okay,” Stiles mumbles, now trying to keep up as well as keep on his feet. He lets Peter down enough so the other man can help walk, and then keeps pulling at Peter’s pants. They’re making his grip slide anyway. “Okay, so we’re doing this—”

“Are you _dense_ ,” Peter mutters, yanking off Stiles’ shirt.

“Well, I’m eighteen,” Stiles says back, as they lose their pants.

Peter looks at him, half-slumped against some piece of furniture, one hand on Stiles’ back, its fingertips absently moving back and forth along Stiles’ spine in a highly distracting way. “Honestly, not an objection for me,” he says. “If it’s immoral but it’s not illegal, it’s really just a PR risk and this entire town has lines of credit at the bank.”

“Okay, so, the whole small-town godfather thing you all have going on,” Stiles says, pressing back between Peter’s legs. Peter stiffens, then abruptly sags into it, groaning, dilated pupils fixed on Stiles and Stiles is breathing through his mouth like some kind of guppy but the _smell_ coming off the man, God. He wants to suck that all down. He leans in and starts laving at Peter’s throat and jaw, taking that scent right off from the source, but the more he gets, the more he wants. “Hot. Very hot. Not the greatest—thing to admit—”

“Oh, nothing I didn’t know. Transparently jealous, saw that,” Peter snorts. Moaning again in the middle of it, as they end up on the floor in a competition to see who can grind the hardest against the other. He’s losing, the snap of his hips getting increasingly disjointed, but he doesn’t really mind from how he’s gripping Stiles’ shoulder. “I—God—I don’t— _fuck_.”

Not a good fuck. Stiles registered the sudden twist in the man, even before the pain-scent filtered in. He lets go of Peter’s bicep, grimacing, and puts his hand on Peter’s chest instead. Then yanks it off as more than ‘really good time’ starts to filter back into his head. “Shit. Okay, I—you remember—”

“You’re a werewolf, yes, well, Derek still had all his limbs afterward.” Peter pushes himself up and latches onto Stiles’ wrist, squeezing hard enough that Stiles has to make an effort to flinch. “Do you or do you not want this?”

“I—” Stiles exhales, shakes his head, looks back up “—shouldn’t I be saying that? I mean, yeah, the _werewolf_ here. And Derek did look like—”

“Because you didn’t actually like him,” Peter says impatiently. He stares at Stiles, then sucks his breath a little. “I assumed.”

“I don’t,” Stiles says. “I just…look, you should know, I’m kind of…even with people I like, I. I’ve gotten them fucked up.”

Peter sucks his breath again, a longer inhale over his teeth that whistles at the end, and not in a jaunty way. His heartbeat is slowing. Maybe he’s coming to his senses, Stiles thinks as the man takes a surveying look of their bodies, and then Peter pulls up Stiles’ hand between them.

“You were going to do something with this,” he says. He’s a little uncertain, but it’s in what to say, not the fact that he’s speaking at all. “You said—a while ago, that by touching people, you can…heal them?”

“Not really. Not heal heal, it’s just numbing things. I mean, okay, shock alone is a major factor and if you can take the pain away, a lot of times that’s enough to let your body’s natural abilities kick in, and…um…” 

At first Peter just looks interested in the new knowledge—of course, it’s him, and the Hales all generally seem to have the ability to weaponize interest. But then his gaze changes and Stiles gets the distinct impression that it’s not really what Stiles is saying that’s of interest, and that’s just…not the usual reaction Stiles gets. So he stops talking.

Peter keeps looking like that, at him. Then the man leans forward. Stops, heartbeat speeding up and then slowing, and then he tugs up Stiles’ hand and deliberately puts it on his shoulder. “Show me,” he says.

It’s not about showing him, and anyway, at the end of the day, the whole thing is just a kind of bandaid, Stiles wants to say. But…Stiles bites his lip and concentrates. Peter stares down at his hand, lips pressed together; they’ve both tensed up enough so when Peter suddenly shivers, Stiles nearly pushes him down on his back. Peter catches on and tightens his hold on Stiles’ wrist again—to keep him in place—and another second goes by without anything bad happening.

They both breathe out at the same time. Peter glances up at that point, a little exhausted humor in his expression, but when he sees how Stiles looks, the almost-smile becomes a not-smile. 

“Cold,” Peter observes.

“My theory is we’re really affecting the inflammation, so yeah, temperature play,” Stiles says without thinking.

“Hmmm. Possibly…later,” Peter says, almost playfully. Then he leans forward. Stiles isn’t quite expecting that and freezes, so Peter stops. Looks at him, serious again, and then pushes the rest of the way, bringing his other arm up and sliding his hand across the back of Stiles’ head. 

He goes down on his back, but he’s taking Stiles with him, not the other way around. And it’s good. It’s slower but deeper, and without the frenzy in the way, Stiles has the time to notice things, like the way Peter’s breath hitches whenever Stiles’ hand drifts a certain way over his stomach, the fact that one of Peter’s canines is slightly longer than the other, the almost citrus-tang his sweat gets as it rubs up from his groin. He doesn’t usually—he doesn’t usually care. Which is easier, when he doesn’t notice.

“You’re—” Peter pauses to set his hands on Stiles’ waist, because clearly, quick learner “—you’re overthinking this.”

“I’m…how the hell am _I_ overthinking this?” Stiles says, pushing up on his elbows.

“Because I’ve thought about it, and I am an intelligent adult with a reasonable understanding of the situation, and I’ve decided I want this,” Peter says, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “I can make choices and I can live with them, and frankly, Stiles, there’s not much you can do about that. I think I know you well enough at this point to know you’ll try anyway, but that just goes to show I can’t have everything perfect.”

“You—are a dick,” Stiles says. Grimaces, and then decides he’s going to stand by that one. Even if it just amuses the hell out of Peter, who’s smiling and whose thumbs are drawing annoyingly feel-good circles on his hips. “Also, you sound like Derek. ‘I make bad choices.’”

“Now you’re just trying to insult me,” Peter growls. He flexes up from the groin—he’s trying to sit up, but the side-effect is his erection sliding very teasingly along Stiles’ perineum, which Stiles isn’t going to _not_ respond to. Stiles presses back, Peter shudders, and for a second they’re deadlocked. Then, with an effort that makes him gasp, Peter pushes on and gets upright enough to throw his arm around Stiles’ back. “For the record, the fact that you’ve slept with my nephew is _also_ not something I care about. He’s not nearly enough for you. You need a challenge.”

“Is that what you think?” Stiles says.

“Yes. And I also—” Peter drags himself up one more inch “—I also think, Stiles, that what really worries you isn’t whether I get hurt because of this. It’s whether you’ll have to take responsibility for it. Which is such an _eighteen-year-old_ mentality.”

Stiles opens his mouth to retort that Peter’s the one resorting to ageist attacks, when the other man abruptly lies back down. He locks eyes with Stiles, then pointedly removes his hands from Stiles and spreads his arms out on either side of him. Breathes in, out, and settles himself that way.

Take it or leave it, the decision is yours.

Well, he’s right. And annoying and unfair, and Stiles thinks he wants to leave just for that. And—he’s tired, he thinks. He’s tired, he’s supposed to be on a break now. His dad told him to stop worrying about things, so isn’t this one of those? He’s got plenty of other things to worry about.

“I would like it if you grew up,” Peter suddenly says.

Stiles blinks. Then looks at the man again. Peter made that sound like just part of the same challenge, but that’s not what he smells like, not what his suddenly uneven heartbeat is saying. He’s not nearly sure about this either, and he’s older and allegedly has this all figured out, except for the parts he doesn’t know yet because supernatural. But…he lets out a sharp little relieved puff, when Stiles leans back down. Lets it out, and relaxes all over, and smells happier.

“This whole thing,” Stiles finally says. “You know, where you and I keep messing with each other just to mess with.”

“Oh, you like that,” Peter murmurs, as Stiles slides back onto him and his arms come up to accommodate it. “You like having your work noticed as much as I like—”

Like this, right, Stiles almost snorts. But doesn’t, because he can’t do that with Peter’s cock in his mouth. Well, not and still make it fun. 

Though it isn’t quite that either. ‘Fun’ doesn’t really fit the way Stiles feels when Peter’s thighs tremble under his hands, solid muscle that still can’t move a single fingertip of Stiles’, not when he doesn’t want them to. Or how Peter just—lets him. Lets him, not a drop of fear clogging up Stiles’ nose, lets him put his mouth all over the most vulnerable places and use it to shake up the man so badly that it takes him minutes and minutes to calm down again, and still all Peter does is drag his fingers through Stiles’ hair. Stiles could tear him to pieces, and he knows that, and he still…

He rolls over, the moment he can, with sweat still running off his back in ripples and not drips, and he still moves his hands from Stiles’ head to shoulders to waist. Then to Stiles’ cock, pulling it up between his thighs as he squeezes them together. He lies there, still shaking from his own climax, as Stiles ruts and gasps against him. His hand even comes up and pushes down against the small of Stiles’ back, squeezing out more of the air between them to make room for the heat. He does that even when Stiles loses control a bit, digs hard into his hips. Snarls against his throat so his pulse nearly jumps out of his skin. He still does that.

So ‘fun’ isn’t the right word for it, not with how, even afterward, Stiles feels like he’s holding something paper-thin, something that could snap any second. Or turn, and slide away out of his grip, or turn and cut—because this thing he’s got, it’s thin but it’s got the sharp edges and somehow he’s got it by the flat for now, but he knows that that could change at any time.

He’s afraid, actually. Which is not something he thinks about that often. He usually doesn’t have the time to be, or give himself that time.

“Is it common to be your age?” Peter asks.

“What?” Stiles says.

He turns his head to find Peter up on one elbow. Peter stays that way long enough to extract his leg from under Stiles’ knee, then promptly (and kind of gracelessly) drops back down. Apparently, him overlapping Stiles is totally fine, and never mind the elbow just under Stiles’ sternum. “Alphas. You and Scott, and this Lydia person…and most of the bodies from the Blackwood pack. Melissa didn’t seem to be editing those parts of their autopsy reports. You all seem to skew young.”

“I guess,” Stiles says. It’s not something he’s studied, he starts to say, and then rethinks that. “Not everyone survives the bite. You’ve got a better chance if you’re young, so…and then, Scott aside, you usually make alpha because you’ve killed somebody. Which, again, easier to pull that off when you’re younger.”

“Really?” Peter says. “I would have thought otherwise. You have more resources as you age.”

“Maybe I should say, easier to find people who aren’t going to care you just killed a packmate,” Stiles says. “Because that’s still hard. I mean, we have allies, but most of them aren’t inviting Dad and Scott’s mom to visit over the summer, you know?”

Peter makes a thoughtful sound against Stiles’ shoulder. Then he’s quiet for a few minutes, and Stiles starts to think they might just want to nap here when Peter, grunting, smelling sore and slightly annoyed, abruptly gets up. His face wrinkles up over Stiles as his hand runs through some drying come on Stiles’ leg, which he’s using for leverage, and then Stiles gets it. 

“Shower?” he asks Peter.

“Preferably,” Peter mutters. He stops on one knee, come-smeared hand drifting towards his shoulder. Then puts his hand down on the floor to push all the way to standing, only to stop as he sees Stiles reaching for him.

“I could…” Stiles says, wiggling his fingers at that shoulder. “You know, since you look like it’s bothering you again.”

Peter considers it, then nods. “Yes, please,” he says.

So Stiles helps him up and to the bathroom. It’s a big shower and Peter doesn’t seem averse to sharing, but Stiles…needs a moment, and just uses the sink to clean himself up instead. Peter finishes first and goes out, but it turns out he’s just waiting for Stiles to show up so they can walk to the bedroom together. He doesn’t get on the bed till Stiles, not sure whether this really should be as funny as it’s starting to feel, follows him.

“This place, so you’re keeping it?” Stiles says. 

He’s taking one of the bottom corners. Peter is tucking himself under the sheets like a normal person and looking at him as if the man wants to say something, but instead Peter shrugs. “I suppose. I think it was time anyway—Talia doesn’t really need me in the house anymore, with really just Cora left, and now she’s off to college. Well, if we can keep her and Derek there.”

“Scott’s looking at UC-Davis, and I think that’s just an hour from Derek’s place up there,” Stiles says. “He’s actually serious about Derek, and he looks after people he cares about.”

Peter’s expression becomes a complicated mix of reluctance, irritation, worry, and amusement. “Derek doesn’t need yet another person to clean up after him. What he needs is someone to give him an actual purpose in life, besides defending family members who have _already_ set up everything that’s necessary. That’s my family’s problem, honestly.”

“The purpose thing?” Stiles says.

“Yes.” For a second Peter’s quiet, except for when his head thumps against the headboard. “Burying him in the basement floor was a mistake. It made him into a damned cause, rather than a footnote. Ten years wasted on that…and I can’t blame Talia for it, I was just as much in favor. Well, lessons learned.”

“You do seem to try to do that,” Stiles says. He twists over, then back as half his leg unexpectedly slides off the bed. The mattress is sagging on this corner, he realizes. He pulls himself up into a sitting position and then catches Peter looking at him again, wanting to say something. “So werewolves seem like a fun new mission?”

“You know, your father wouldn’t believe us,” Peter says after a long moment. 

Stiles frowns. “What?”

“Oh, he never told you? Why he decided to let us in on all of this?” Peter says, blinking. He pushes himself up against the headboard; he doesn’t seem smug about it, just mildly surprised.

“Well, no. And now that you mention it, I _would_ like to know, because Dad has totally beaten all of that actuarial stuff about alpha ages that we were talking about earlier, and he didn’t do that by being a complete idiot,” Stiles says, turning more towards him. “So randomly shifting for people in a _police station_ is definitely not in character for him.”

“We thought you were all vampires,” Peter says. He pauses, then reaches for something on the end-table that’s not actually there. His phone, maybe. “It actually did fit very nicely with the evidence we had. We showed him the documentation, and I think that upset him.”

Stiles needs a second or five. “ _Vampires_? But—sun? Garlic? Holy water?”

“Not that kind of vampire,” Peter says irritably. “I told you, we did research. There was a series of occult-themed murders in the Southwest several years ago, and the reports did say the people who were arrested for it displayed some very unusual physical traits—fakir-type stuff, but not just tricks. But they were people. One died in the police shootout.”

“Oh, that clusterfuck. Yeah, those people did get hold of real Romanian bloodstones, but they weren’t using them right and I know the woman who cleaned up the lamia those idiots ended up calling up by mistake,” Stiles says. Then has to stare again. “But seriously? You thought we were those assholes? No wonder Dad shifted.”

“That’s what he said as well,” Peter says, sighing. “Well, I think we all understand now that you are _not_ those people.”

“Good,” Stiles says. He pushes at the sheets, then looks at the other man again. “So you want to know who we really are, instead.”

“Eventually,” Peter says. He absently smooths one hand over the top sheet. Then shrugs and starts to slide under it. “For now, I’ll settle for a few good nights’ sleep and less breakage in this apartment. So if you teach me about werewolves and magic, I’ll teach you how mature people date each other.”

“I—that’s—you’re—”

Peter hums, and ignores the sputtering, and nestles down into his pillow. Stiles can’t see his head anymore, and his heartbeat isn’t saying a damn thing except that he is totally okay with this turn of events, so Stiles ends up crawling over to stare into Peter’s face.

“That’s a really dick move,” Stiles finally says.

“I don’t think that’s your real objection,” Peter says. His eyes are closed, and for a second Stiles thinks they’re just going to leave it at that, but then he sighs. Pushes an arm out, flopping the blankets away from the space beside him. “Talia can hold things off without a lawyer for another four hours, tops. Then I need to deal with your non-enemy acquaintance, Ms. Martin. Which I’m going to do regardless of what you choose to do, Stiles, but if you’d like to make any arguments for _how_ I should do that…”

“This is also a dick move,” Stiles says. Then, making a face (which okay, he honestly only half-feels), he scoots into the space. He doesn’t cuddle up, and from the way Peter relaxes slightly, that hadn’t been what the other man wanted either. But he does flop Peter’s way. “And annoyingly, a good one.”

“Happy to be of service,” Peter says, eyes still closed. But he’s smiling.

Stiles still doesn’t know where this is going, and it’s still terrifying. But…he doesn’t get up. Not yet.

Maybe, he thinks. Maybe he’ll just see this one out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've done the whole human!Peter, werewolf!Stiles thing before, and spun Peter bumbling around in the supernatural for comic effect. This time the take on Peter's...kind of that he's the Stiles here. Doesn't quite know what he's getting himself into, but he's going to tackle it in an intelligent, resourceful way. So him pretending to be Stiles online is the Peter version of that scene where Stiles prints out the entire Internet on werewolves.
> 
> Also, Peter was much older to begin with when he started having to sacrifice parts of his personal life for his family, so he had time to develop a self-awareness about what his lifestyle does that Stiles hasn't. And he picked up on Stiles' playground pigtail-pulling immediately; he just needed a while to realize that Stiles' obliviousness about it was real and not part of the act.


End file.
